Feature: do not repeat message header (sender/time) if sent by the same person over short time

[pinusc]

It might "modernize" nchat's appearance a bit to make sender header behavior more configurable.

As it stands, If I send 10 messages in a row, nchat will show each of them with a header saying "You (time:sent)", and similarly for received messages. This is, in my opinion, ugly - and most importantly it clutters the screen harming readability.

I'm thinking subsequent messages by the same sender might just not repeat the header.
I can think of three options:

• If a message is sent within 3 (5? 10? 1?) minutes of the last, don't show a header for it. I have seen chat applications use this behavior in the past, though I can't remember which
• Move sent-time to the end/beginning, so that it's less obtrusive. Same as above, only top sent message shows sender, the other ones only show time.
• With my right-aligned outgoing messages PR, the header becomes mostly useless on 1-1 chats, because sender can be intuitively discerned by alignment. We could hide the time completely, and perhaps only show it when a message is selected. I have also seen some chat apps do this (Facebook messenger?). This is cleanest IMHO, but also opinionated, and probably the hardest to implement.

In all cases, there could be some visual indicator that the messages are separated - even just a horizontal line matching the width of the message above. And of course this should all be a config option.

Sadly part of the issues with a TUI chat app is that we can't play with font sizes, and so having smaller headers/times (as whatsapp does with times) is not possible. Still, I think there are possible improvements to be made in avoiding clutter and improving readability.