Add ability to hilight characters in local

[aethereal]

So we've had a few suggestions that are about trying to deal with noisy chat spam, at least partially in local:  ban-for-a-time-period.  Lower the radius of your local listening and/or speaking.  I was talking with someone the other night who said that they just global ignore people who are nearby but they aren't talking to, and try to remember to unignore them later.

 

Certainly, following conversations in local in a crowded area (probably mostly Pocket D) can be hard.  But I would be chicken to use any banning-based solutions because I might want to hear the person, and it seems confusing if I literally can't hear someone but you can and we're both trying to react to it.

 

So what if, instead, I could select characters and say "Hilight their speech in local."  Maybe it could be cyan or something.  Then I can scan and easily distinguish my conversational partners text from overheard conversation, but I haven't muted anyone, and I can pay attention if I need to.  Further, there's no real problem if I don't have perfect hygiene here.  If I'm talking to Bob one night and highlight him, and then tomorrow night Bob is talking near me, I just say, "What?  Why's he hilighted?" and unhighlight him.  No harm, no foul.

 

The way this would work is you would right-click a person, or left-click their name in the chat box, and there'd be another option in the pop-up menu, "Highlight local," at which point their text would be some distinctive color in local.  If you clicked on someone that was already highlighted, the menu option would be "Unhilight local."