7 ms·

So get a better IRC client? Really not hard to do things like syntax formatting and auto link follow (GUI versions of IRCII had plugins for this in the late 90s

by exelius 10y ago

So get a better IRC client? Really not hard to do things like syntax formatting and auto link follow (GUI versions of IRCII had plugins for this in the late 90s, so it's not like it's even a novel idea).

cortesoft 10y ago
A better IRC client isn't going to provide chat history.
- jstanley 10y ago
  An IRC bouncer (e.g. znc) can do this, but it's far from seamless.
- VLM 10y ago
  Just run your IRC client in screen/tmux like we've done for a quarter century. The real advantage of slack isn't even client its stuff like massive logging for e-discovery and single sign on integration. Admittedly not terribly appealing for FOSS but once you use it at work... Also integrations in general are smoother in slack than in IRC. Someone has already written the bot and its a click away to install and it generally works.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    > The real advantage of slack isn't even client its stuff like massive logging for e-discovery and single sign on integration. Admittedly not terribly appealing for FOSS but once you use it at work... Which can also be done with IRC clients. This is a video of a search system I built for the Quassel IRC client: https://dl.kuschku.de/videos/2016-09-16_04-03-36.mp4 https://dl.kuschku.de/videos/2016-09-16_04-03-36.mp4 Quassel is a distributed system, so you have a bouncer and client which integrate tightly, with clients for Linux, Windows, Mac, Web, Android, iOS, which stores backlog in a database. This search system is a very simple one, and simply uses postgres’ fulltext word vector search.
    - NateDad 10y ago
      "log in to slack" vs. "deploy 3 services in the cloud by yourself and force everyone to use a specific irc client (good luck)" There's a reason people like slack so much. It does a ton of stuff out of the box with no headaches. Nobody wants to maintain all that stuff.
      - kuschku 10y ago
        > There's a reason people like slack so much. It does a ton of stuff out of the box with no headaches. Nobody wants to maintain all that stuff. So instead of paying someone to maintain it, you pay someone to maintain it who keeps all your data from you and prevents you from accessing it, and who admits he’ll read all your stuff. How is that better again? That said, IRCCloud already does it for free, in the cloud, just works™, and the Quassel people are also working on improving ease of use and deployment.
        qudat 10y ago
        > So instead of paying someone to maintain it, you pay someone to maintain it who keeps all your data from you and prevents you from accessing it, and who admits he’ll read all your stuff. You aren't paying "someone" you're paying an entire company that is dedicated to making the application highly available, with all the bells and whistles, with zero hassle. Really, if you think IRC is so similar to Slack, then why are so many companies, organizations flocking to it? There has to be a reason.
        kuschku 10y ago
        > Really, if you think IRC is so similar to Slack, then why are so many companies, organizations flocking to it? There has to be a reason. If HN has higher discussion quality than reddit, why are not all devs on HN instead? If Linux is better for servers, why are people still starting projects on Windows? etc... The power of marketing, directly or word-of-mouth, is important. And a decentral community can never do as perfect marketing as a company can do. There are IRC clients and apps, and third party integrations as powerful as Slack, and as easy to use. But you have to find them, install them separately – there’s no single combined effort to market a single "just works" solution, yet ;)
  - to3m 10y ago
    > Just run your IRC client in screen/tmux like we've done for a quarter century. Wait... did you just tell me to go fuck myself?
    - aiiane 10y ago
      I believe they did, Bob.
  - compuguy 10y ago
    Or you can use a web based interface like the lounge.
- kuschku 10y ago
  Yes it is. This is exactly what Quassel and IRCCloud do.
- philh 10y ago
  A few people have replied, saying how to get chat history with IRC, but as far as I can tell, none of them work like Slack. With Slack, you can see history from before the first time you connect. It looks like none of the IRC solutions enable that; the IRC protocol doesn't make it possible, without the server (or a channel member) keeping logs. (I haven't used either very much, so please correct me if I'm wrong.)
  - scrollaway 10y ago
    IRCCloud can, they're a client too :) I highly recommend them if you are serious about IRC. But yes you're right, nothing in the IRC protocol for it. There is something in IRCv3 to provide chat history but I don't know if it's even in the current version of the spec. https://www.irccloud.com/ https://www.irccloud.com/
    - philh 10y ago
      How does it do this? When you use IRCCloud to go to a channel for the first time, where does IRCCloud get the history for that channel from? (You say "they're a client too" - I confess, I don't know what they are apart from a client.)
      - scrollaway 10y ago
        Like I was saying, IRCv3 has support for replaying the channel's history, as long as it's stored serverside. But I don't know if anything actually implements it, even IRCCloud which is v3-compatible. At the moment if you join a channel you can't read its backlog, no. They could implement it though if they used logs from their users... kinda wish they would. But hey.
        philh 10y ago
        > At the moment if you join a channel you can't read its backlog, no. Then I'm not entirely sure what you were referring to, when you said "IRCCloud can". Backlog from before you joined the channel is the specific feature that I was saying couldn't be done. It's interesting to know that IRCv3 does have that support, so I was wrong about it not being possible. But if nothing implements it, it's not very helpful.
- baldfat 10y ago
  We are talking Open Source Project Communication not small group communication. IRC and FreeNode channels have been the standard for communication and not for archival purposes. I use an IRC bouncer with my home server and I never look back through the thousands of communications except to see a reply to my question. Why does a Open Source Community channel need archived communication unless it is just a few developers only chat?
- rsync 10y ago
  "A better IRC client isn't going to provide chat history." That's not even wrong.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
djsumdog 10y ago
IRC as a protocol is very outdated. If I log in at home and forgot out log out at work, I need another username. IRCv3 has a lot of enhancements that should move IRC out of the 1990s as far as a communication protocol, but there's not a whole lot of movement on it. I think FreeNode has some v3 support. We don't have a lot of developers dedicating time to this. I'd love to myself, because it's something the OSS community needs, but it's also very difficult to contribute to projects when you're already doing 40 hours a week at a day job. Today I feel like most of the OSS projects that are getting support are ones that are corporately supported: http://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source-in-community-and-enterprise-software/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source-...
- kuschku 10y ago
  > but there's not a whole lot of movement on it. I think FreeNode has some v3 support. That’s as wrong as you can get. Networks with support, ranked by amount of supported features, are: InspIRCd Testnet, EsperNet, IRCCloud Teams, Snoonet, Rizon, IRCHighWay, freenode: http://ircv3.net/support/networks.html http://ircv3.net/support/networks.html Clients with support, ranked alphabetically, are: Desktop: AdilIRC, BitchX, ChatZilla, Colloquy, Conspire, Hexchat, IceChat, Instantbird, Irssi, Konversation, KVIrc, LimeChat, mIRC, Mozilla Thunderbird, Quassel, Textual, WeeChat. Web: IRCCLoud, Iris, Kiwi IRC, The Lounge, Mibbit, Quassel-Webserver Mobile: AndChat, IRC for Android, AndroIRC, Colloquy, IRC7, IRCCloud, LimeChat, Palaver, Quasseldroid, YAAIC Bouncers: Quassel, ZNC Bots: Limnoria, Sopel, Moon Moon http://ircv3.net/software/clients.html http://ircv3.net/software/clients.html And libraries are: cinch, Communi, irc-framework, Kitteh IRC Client Library, Net::Async::IRC, pydle, Rust irc, Warren, zIRC That’s quite a whole lot of movement. That’s every project related to IRC
- rsync 10y ago
  "If I log in at home and forgot out log out at work, I need another username." You don't log into irc from your work or your home or your anything. You run screen in your shell account and log into irc once and never log in again. Christ - do we need a refresher course here in how to use the Internet for the incoming freshman class of 1994 ?
s73ver 10y ago
Not everyone is going to use the same client.
always_good 10y ago
The problem is that you might be running a nicer IRC setup, but almost nobody else is. Doesn't do you much good if everyone else logs off the second they close their laptop lid, or can't scroll back up to see what you just said because they had to relaunch their client. Chatting is interesting because of other people. That's why I'm chatting. In Slack, I can ping people that are offline. And all they have to do is open Slack again or reconnect to the internet and they get notified. I don't need to count on them being an IRC veteran. All these people pointing out ways to enhance your personal IRC experience are missing the point. Oh yeah, and I can post code in Slack.

by exelius 10y ago

cortesoft 10y ago

A better IRC client isn't going to provide chat history.

jstanley 10y ago
An IRC bouncer (e.g. znc) can do this, but it's far from seamless.
VLM 10y ago
Just run your IRC client in screen/tmux like we've done for a quarter century. The real advantage of slack isn't even client its stuff like massive logging for e-discovery and single sign on integration. Admittedly not terribly appealing for FOSS but once you use it at work... Also integrations in general are smoother in slack than in IRC. Someone has already written the bot and its a click away to install and it generally works.
- kuschku 10y ago
  > The real advantage of slack isn't even client its stuff like massive logging for e-discovery and single sign on integration. Admittedly not terribly appealing for FOSS but once you use it at work... Which can also be done with IRC clients. This is a video of a search system I built for the Quassel IRC client: https://dl.kuschku.de/videos/2016-09-16_04-03-36.mp4 https://dl.kuschku.de/videos/2016-09-16_04-03-36.mp4 Quassel is a distributed system, so you have a bouncer and client which integrate tightly, with clients for Linux, Windows, Mac, Web, Android, iOS, which stores backlog in a database. This search system is a very simple one, and simply uses postgres’ fulltext word vector search.
  - NateDad 10y ago
    "log in to slack" vs. "deploy 3 services in the cloud by yourself and force everyone to use a specific irc client (good luck)" There's a reason people like slack so much. It does a ton of stuff out of the box with no headaches. Nobody wants to maintain all that stuff.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      > There's a reason people like slack so much. It does a ton of stuff out of the box with no headaches. Nobody wants to maintain all that stuff. So instead of paying someone to maintain it, you pay someone to maintain it who keeps all your data from you and prevents you from accessing it, and who admits he’ll read all your stuff. How is that better again? That said, IRCCloud already does it for free, in the cloud, just works™, and the Quassel people are also working on improving ease of use and deployment.
      - qudat 10y ago
        > So instead of paying someone to maintain it, you pay someone to maintain it who keeps all your data from you and prevents you from accessing it, and who admits he’ll read all your stuff. You aren't paying "someone" you're paying an entire company that is dedicated to making the application highly available, with all the bells and whistles, with zero hassle. Really, if you think IRC is so similar to Slack, then why are so many companies, organizations flocking to it? There has to be a reason.
        kuschku 10y ago
        > Really, if you think IRC is so similar to Slack, then why are so many companies, organizations flocking to it? There has to be a reason. If HN has higher discussion quality than reddit, why are not all devs on HN instead? If Linux is better for servers, why are people still starting projects on Windows? etc... The power of marketing, directly or word-of-mouth, is important. And a decentral community can never do as perfect marketing as a company can do. There are IRC clients and apps, and third party integrations as powerful as Slack, and as easy to use. But you have to find them, install them separately – there’s no single combined effort to market a single "just works" solution, yet ;)
- to3m 10y ago
  > Just run your IRC client in screen/tmux like we've done for a quarter century. Wait... did you just tell me to go fuck myself?
  - aiiane 10y ago
    I believe they did, Bob.
- compuguy 10y ago
  Or you can use a web based interface like the lounge.
kuschku 10y ago
Yes it is. This is exactly what Quassel and IRCCloud do.
philh 10y ago
A few people have replied, saying how to get chat history with IRC, but as far as I can tell, none of them work like Slack. With Slack, you can see history from before the first time you connect. It looks like none of the IRC solutions enable that; the IRC protocol doesn't make it possible, without the server (or a channel member) keeping logs. (I haven't used either very much, so please correct me if I'm wrong.)
- scrollaway 10y ago
  IRCCloud can, they're a client too :) I highly recommend them if you are serious about IRC. But yes you're right, nothing in the IRC protocol for it. There is something in IRCv3 to provide chat history but I don't know if it's even in the current version of the spec. https://www.irccloud.com/ https://www.irccloud.com/
  - philh 10y ago
    How does it do this? When you use IRCCloud to go to a channel for the first time, where does IRCCloud get the history for that channel from? (You say "they're a client too" - I confess, I don't know what they are apart from a client.)
    - scrollaway 10y ago
      Like I was saying, IRCv3 has support for replaying the channel's history, as long as it's stored serverside. But I don't know if anything actually implements it, even IRCCloud which is v3-compatible. At the moment if you join a channel you can't read its backlog, no. They could implement it though if they used logs from their users... kinda wish they would. But hey.
      - philh 10y ago
        > At the moment if you join a channel you can't read its backlog, no. Then I'm not entirely sure what you were referring to, when you said "IRCCloud can". Backlog from before you joined the channel is the specific feature that I was saying couldn't be done. It's interesting to know that IRCv3 does have that support, so I was wrong about it not being possible. But if nothing implements it, it's not very helpful.
baldfat 10y ago
We are talking Open Source Project Communication not small group communication. IRC and FreeNode channels have been the standard for communication and not for archival purposes. I use an IRC bouncer with my home server and I never look back through the thousands of communications except to see a reply to my question. Why does a Open Source Community channel need archived communication unless it is just a few developers only chat?
rsync 10y ago
"A better IRC client isn't going to provide chat history." That's not even wrong.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

djsumdog 10y ago

IRC as a protocol is very outdated. If I log in at home and forgot out log out at work, I need another username. IRCv3 has a lot of enhancements that should move IRC out of the 1990s as far as a communication protocol, but there's not a whole lot of movement on it. I think FreeNode has some v3 support. We don't have a lot of developers dedicating time to this. I'd love to myself, because it's something the OSS community needs, but it's also very difficult to contribute to projects when you're already doing 40 hours a week at a day job. Today I feel like most of the OSS projects that are getting support are ones that are corporately supported: http://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source-in-community-and-enterprise-software/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source-...

kuschku 10y ago
> but there's not a whole lot of movement on it. I think FreeNode has some v3 support. That’s as wrong as you can get. Networks with support, ranked by amount of supported features, are: InspIRCd Testnet, EsperNet, IRCCloud Teams, Snoonet, Rizon, IRCHighWay, freenode: http://ircv3.net/support/networks.html http://ircv3.net/support/networks.html Clients with support, ranked alphabetically, are: Desktop: AdilIRC, BitchX, ChatZilla, Colloquy, Conspire, Hexchat, IceChat, Instantbird, Irssi, Konversation, KVIrc, LimeChat, mIRC, Mozilla Thunderbird, Quassel, Textual, WeeChat. Web: IRCCLoud, Iris, Kiwi IRC, The Lounge, Mibbit, Quassel-Webserver Mobile: AndChat, IRC for Android, AndroIRC, Colloquy, IRC7, IRCCloud, LimeChat, Palaver, Quasseldroid, YAAIC Bouncers: Quassel, ZNC Bots: Limnoria, Sopel, Moon Moon http://ircv3.net/software/clients.html http://ircv3.net/software/clients.html And libraries are: cinch, Communi, irc-framework, Kitteh IRC Client Library, Net::Async::IRC, pydle, Rust irc, Warren, zIRC That’s quite a whole lot of movement. That’s every project related to IRC
rsync 10y ago
"If I log in at home and forgot out log out at work, I need another username." You don't log into irc from your work or your home or your anything. You run screen in your shell account and log into irc once and never log in again. Christ - do we need a refresher course here in how to use the Internet for the incoming freshman class of 1994 ?

s73ver 10y ago

Not everyone is going to use the same client.

always_good 10y ago

The problem is that you might be running a nicer IRC setup, but almost nobody else is. Doesn't do you much good if everyone else logs off the second they close their laptop lid, or can't scroll back up to see what you just said because they had to relaunch their client. Chatting is interesting because of other people. That's why I'm chatting. In Slack, I can ping people that are offline. And all they have to do is open Slack again or reconnect to the internet and they get notified. I don't need to count on them being an IRC veteran. All these people pointing out ways to enhance your personal IRC experience are missing the point. Oh yeah, and I can post code in Slack.