Quote Originally Posted by Rufalus View Post
Just leave the pop up hanging there, finish reading the text very quickly, then click commence if it has not timed out already.
That's the problem. Unless you're already on the very last dialog window (and the chances of that are slim given just how many screens of dialog most conversations seem to have), you're guaranteed that the DF will have timed out if you try doing that. You have a choice. You can either read the text so you know the story, OR you can accept the duty that you've been waiting half an hour or more to do. You CANNOT do both. We need a way of exiting out of dialog without finishing it (and without any quests being advanced as though we'd finished it), so that that dialog can be available later when we have time to read it.

And no, having cutscenes available at the Inn doesn't help this problem (or rather, it only helps one little piece of the problem but not the rest), because the majority of dialog isn't in cutscenes at all. It's the regular non-cutscene conversations with NPCs that create most of the issues here.