I think a popular use would be to allow the timestamp to only display if it has changed since the last message. For instance I often see scripted themes use timestamps which will display something like:
12:51am
<joe> hi
<mary> hi joe
<joe> what's up?
12:52am
<mary> not much, you?
Using a custom identifier it could be as simple as
alias mytimestamp {
if (%last_ts == $asctime(hh:nntt)) return
else {
%last_ts = $asctime(hh:nntt)
return $asctime(hh:nntt) $+ $crlf
}
}
That would be assuming that
$crlf worked as a newline, but anyway, I'm
guessing this is the kind of thing people would use it for.