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You're certainly right that the UX of most IRC clients is seriously lacking compared to eg. Slack. But one thing I've always wondered - is there any reason that

You're certainly right that the UX of most IRC clients is seriously lacking compared to eg. Slack. But one thing I've always wondered - is there any reason that IRC couldn't be used as the underlying protocol for these Slack-esque apps? There's no reason why the protocol itself has to handle UX features like emoji/embedding/etc. - just send a text token over the wire and have the client interpret it as a specially displayed element. The only thing it may not handle well is file uploads... but even then, I seem to recall IRC having built-in support for sending files?

strong_code 11y ago
It has DCC protocol built in, but it isn't nearly as robust as most would like for it to be.
maaku 11y ago
These services are really replacements for IRC bouncers, which are not as well standardized (but should be).
scrollaway 11y ago
> is there any reason that IRC couldn't be used as the underlying protocol for these Slack-esque apps The IRC protocol is old. It predates HTTP. Some things are possible in theory, but pointless if no client supports them. Look into ircv3 (http://ircv3.net/ http://ircv3.net/), they're writing new specs for the IRC protocol to build exactly what you're talking about. It's very promising, although IMHO too little, too late - Matrix looks like it's going to take the crown eventually.
- haroldp 11y ago
  I'm sure that I'm over simplifying, but can't you just put tokens or markdown right in the chat for those sort of things? If you have an old, flat IRC client, it's ugly but you can figure it out. If you have a supported client you get a nice UI?
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    No amount of markdown makes up for the lack of offline messages.
    - caf 11y ago
      Offline messages is a server issue, though - in principle there's no reason why you couldn't have a server that remembers offline messages and passes them to the client when it reconnects, framing them as regular IRC messages.
      - scrollaway 11y ago
        There is, actually. IRC has no concept of timestamps. IRC has no concept of foreign metadata, even, so shoehorning isn't even possible without looking horrible. IRCv3 fixes all that.
        caf 11y ago
        Prefixing a date/timestamp unless the client has asked for IRCv3 timestamps is reasonable.
        Sanddancer 11y ago
        Yep. This is how slack does it, least for their xmpp gateway. I imagine that their irc gateway is similar.
        scrollaway 11y ago
        And now, you just broke essentially all clients that already support channel logs by duplicating anything they already had. This is a problem bouncers are already solving best they can, and it still sucks. It's not good enough to compete with slack.
        caf 11y ago
        Channel logs is a marginal, client issue, not a protocol issue. Does anyone do client-side logging on any of these other services that do server-side message history? I didn't say anything about competing with slack.
untog 11y ago
Also mobile notifications - that's a huge benefit of Slack and an IRC app couldn't (as far as I can see) provide them without maintaining a constant connection.

strong_code 11y ago

It has DCC protocol built in, but it isn't nearly as robust as most would like for it to be.

maaku 11y ago

These services are really replacements for IRC bouncers, which are not as well standardized (but should be).

scrollaway 11y ago

> is there any reason that IRC couldn't be used as the underlying protocol for these Slack-esque apps The IRC protocol is old. It predates HTTP. Some things are possible in theory, but pointless if no client supports them. Look into ircv3 (http://ircv3.net/ http://ircv3.net/), they're writing new specs for the IRC protocol to build exactly what you're talking about. It's very promising, although IMHO too little, too late - Matrix looks like it's going to take the crown eventually.

haroldp 11y ago
I'm sure that I'm over simplifying, but can't you just put tokens or markdown right in the chat for those sort of things? If you have an old, flat IRC client, it's ugly but you can figure it out. If you have a supported client you get a nice UI?
- scrollaway 11y ago
  No amount of markdown makes up for the lack of offline messages.
  - caf 11y ago
    Offline messages is a server issue, though - in principle there's no reason why you couldn't have a server that remembers offline messages and passes them to the client when it reconnects, framing them as regular IRC messages.
    - scrollaway 11y ago
      There is, actually. IRC has no concept of timestamps. IRC has no concept of foreign metadata, even, so shoehorning isn't even possible without looking horrible. IRCv3 fixes all that.
      - caf 11y ago
        Prefixing a date/timestamp unless the client has asked for IRCv3 timestamps is reasonable.
        Sanddancer 11y ago
        Yep. This is how slack does it, least for their xmpp gateway. I imagine that their irc gateway is similar.
        scrollaway 11y ago
        And now, you just broke essentially all clients that already support channel logs by duplicating anything they already had. This is a problem bouncers are already solving best they can, and it still sucks. It's not good enough to compete with slack.
        caf 11y ago
        Channel logs is a marginal, client issue, not a protocol issue. Does anyone do client-side logging on any of these other services that do server-side message history? I didn't say anything about competing with slack.

untog 11y ago

Also mobile notifications - that's a huge benefit of Slack and an IRC app couldn't (as far as I can see) provide them without maintaining a constant connection.