Trouble / Confusion on Adding a 'Chat Tab' Through Code

Guides UI and Macro
1

Hello everyone, I’m having some trouble/confusion on how to go about creating an additional ‘chat tab’ in addition to the default tabs of ‘General’ and ‘Combat’ - effectively a tab where an addon can dump all its output to.

I thought calling ‘FCF_OpenNewWindow(“name”)’ would do the job, but when I look around ‘nothing’ is there despite my debugging telling me that my new code created tab is correct. When using /framestack, I can see that (as in the image) that the new (4th tab in this case) edit box is there, but I can’t find any other elements relating to it. Additionally, entering input into it / using ‘addmessage()’ directly to it results in nothing, nor does it pickup anything done in game (though ‘general’ seems to pick it up just fine).

So, I know I’m missing something, I just don’t know what it is…/sad. Also, the terminology gets a bit confusing for UI since I guess the root element of all UI are ‘frames’, which may or may not be called ‘frames’ in the code (like a ‘chat tab’ is also a ‘frame’ correct?), it kind of running together on me.

Any help is appreciated, thank you for reading.
http://cubeupload.com/im/blitzer/chatframeissue.jpg

local newChat = FCF_OpenNewWindow("new Chat")

TSMCUSTOM.CustomPrint("checking chat windows") --says it exists
for i = 1, NUM_CHAT_WINDOWS do
	TSMCUSTOM.CustomPrint("i: " .. i)
	TSMCUSTOM.CustomPrint(GetChatWindowInfo(i))
end

--[
local name, fontSize, r, g, b, alpha, shown, locked, docked, uninteractable = GetChatWindowInfo(4) --shows correct name, alpha, docked index --shown yes, locked no
TSMCUSTOM.CustomPrint("GetChatWindowInfo(4).name: " .. name)
TSMCUSTOM.CustomPrint("GetChatWindowInfo(4).alpha: " .. alpha)
TSMCUSTOM.CustomPrint("GetChatWindowInfo(4).shown: " .. tostring(shown))
TSMCUSTOM.CustomPrint("GetChatWindowInfo(4).locked: " .. tostring(locked))
TSMCUSTOM.CustomPrint("GetChatWindowInfo(4).docked: " .. docked)
--]

for i = 1, NUM_CHAT_WINDOWS do
	_G["ChatFrame" .. i]:AddMessage("This is ChatFrame"..i, 0, 0, 0, GetChatTypeIndex("SAY")) --general and manual tabs are fine, coded one does nothing
end

_G["ChatFrame" .. 4]:AddMessage("test test test") --results in nothing
2

All UI elements (that you’re likely to code for) are Regions which derive from UIObject which has parentage which is inaccessible to you as an AddOn coder.

There’s a detailed (and for future readers, likely updated), explanation of this https://wow.gamepedia.com/Widget_API but the gist of it is here:

...
└──UIObject*
   ├──...
   └──Region*
      ├──LayeredRegion*
      │  ├──FontString
      │  └──Texture
      │     ├──Line
      │     └──MaskTexture
      └──Frame
         ├──Browser
         ├──Button
         │  ├──CheckButton
         │  └──ItemButton
         ├──Checkout
         ├──ColorSelect
         ├──Cooldown
         ├──EditBox
         ├──FogOfWarFrame
         ├──GameTooltip
         ├──MessageFrame
         ├──Minimap**
         ├──Model
         │  └──PlayerModel
         │     ├──CinematicModel
         │     ├──DressUpModel
         │     └──TabardModel
         ├──ModelScene
         ├──MovieFrame
         ├──OffScreenFrame
         ├──POIFrame*
         │  ├──ArchaeologyDigSiteFrame
         │  ├──QuestPOIFrame
         │  └──ScenarioPOIFrame
         ├──ScrollFrame
         ├──ScrollingMessageFrame
         ├──SimpleHTML
         ├──Slider
         ├──StatusBar
         └──UnitPositionFrame

* Virtual frame which cannot be created directly.
** Restricted virtual frame. Some elements of this can be manipulated through Lua, but user-created AddOns cannot create new elements at this level (or likely below this level).

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3

The last line “-- Results in nothing”, make sure you have the correct tab selected to see the text message that has been added.

The code below: run the first time and you will see the message "Just getting started here!!!" because creating the new tab also sets it to focus. A /reload, and you won’t see the message until you select the tab that was created.

local myChat
local f = CreateFrame("Frame")
f:SetScript("OnEvent", function(self, event, ...)
	local found
	for i = 1, NUM_CHAT_WINDOWS do
		local name = GetChatWindowInfo(i)
		if name == "new Chat" then
			found = i
			break
		end
	end
	if found then
		myChat = _G["ChatFrame" .. found]
	else
		myChat = FCF_OpenNewWindow("new Chat", true)
	end
	myChat:AddMessage("Just getting started here!!!", 1, 1, 1)
end)
f:RegisterEvent("PLAYER_LOGIN")

FCF_OpenNewWindow will keep adding new windows permanently until you remove/clear them all or reset your entire chat setup with FCF_ResetAllWindows() so you might end up with multiple channels with the name “new Chat” if you don’t check for its existence first.

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