4 ms·

I've heard of lots of people using IRC clients for XMPP, but doing the opposite just feels strange.

_e 9y ago
The beauty of this, as I see it, is that you can now you can "tap" into the many existing communities on IRC instead of trying to force existing communities over to XMPP or web based platforms.
- _e 9y ago
  The best IRC clients are like great text editors... the UX and UI can be customized to each individual's liking via scripts and themes. It is always a work in progress. From my experience, the profile of someone who prefers irssi/mirc/jircii over slack's website to communicate is probably more in-line with the profile of a Hacker News reader vs. someone who follows a sponsored tech blog aimed at CEO's who just want to add buzz words to their vocab.
4c2383f5c88e911 9y ago
Considering that XMPP has more features than IRC, having to map the superset to the subset feels stranger to me than the opposite.
ge0rg 9y ago
Using an IRC client for XMPP guarantees a sub-par experience. I've been doing that for years with bitlbee (how do you join a MUC again?) and later with irssi-xmpp (whoops, Segmentation fault), but IRC has much fewer features than XMPP, so it really doesn't make sense. My favorite XMPP feature is Message Delivery Receipts ([0], the nice little green checkmarks that you have in modern XMPP clients, similar to WhatsApp), that just aren't supported in the IRC protocol. Other gotchas are chat state notifications ([1] "user is typing"), last message correction ([2]) and multiple client resources. It does make sense to use an XMPP client for IRC, though, as most of the IRC features can be easily mapped onto XMPP. I'm using yaxim and poezio to chat with folks on IRC, via biboumi. [0] https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0184.html https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0184.html [1] https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0085.html https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0085.html [2] https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0308.html https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0308.html
- wcummings 9y ago
  IME read receipts and "typing" updates are widely reviled for making online chat more awkward. I know heaps of people who go out of their way to disable receipts and status notifications in their chat apps (iMessage etc). I've even been criticized for not having them disabled in iMessage.
  - ge0rg 9y ago
    I tend to agree for privacy reasons, but message delivery receipts are really useful, especially when the other party is using a mobile connection.
- _e 9y ago
  Thank you for alerting me to Yaxim. Yaxim looks like default bitchx. Yaxim's docs show that you can theme it [0] but I wish they had a repo of existing themes. Compare jIRCii default theme vs jIRCii+analog theme [1]. If an application is going to occupy prime real estate on my desktop for a good portion of time then I want it to look nice. [0] https://doc.poez.io/themes.html https://doc.poez.io/themes.html [1] http://jircii.dashnine.org/media http://jircii.dashnine.org/media
louiz 9y ago
I also wrote my own XMPP client (https://poez.io https://poez.io), but since I also use IRC I decided to write a gateway. This way I can use poezio for everything.

_e 9y ago

The beauty of this, as I see it, is that you can now you can "tap" into the many existing communities on IRC instead of trying to force existing communities over to XMPP or web based platforms.

_e 9y ago
The best IRC clients are like great text editors... the UX and UI can be customized to each individual's liking via scripts and themes. It is always a work in progress. From my experience, the profile of someone who prefers irssi/mirc/jircii over slack's website to communicate is probably more in-line with the profile of a Hacker News reader vs. someone who follows a sponsored tech blog aimed at CEO's who just want to add buzz words to their vocab.

4c2383f5c88e911 9y ago

Considering that XMPP has more features than IRC, having to map the superset to the subset feels stranger to me than the opposite.

ge0rg 9y ago

Using an IRC client for XMPP guarantees a sub-par experience. I've been doing that for years with bitlbee (how do you join a MUC again?) and later with irssi-xmpp (whoops, Segmentation fault), but IRC has much fewer features than XMPP, so it really doesn't make sense. My favorite XMPP feature is Message Delivery Receipts ([0], the nice little green checkmarks that you have in modern XMPP clients, similar to WhatsApp), that just aren't supported in the IRC protocol. Other gotchas are chat state notifications ([1] "user is typing"), last message correction ([2]) and multiple client resources. It does make sense to use an XMPP client for IRC, though, as most of the IRC features can be easily mapped onto XMPP. I'm using yaxim and poezio to chat with folks on IRC, via biboumi. [0] https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0184.html https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0184.html [1] https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0085.html https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0085.html [2] https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0308.html https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0308.html

wcummings 9y ago
IME read receipts and "typing" updates are widely reviled for making online chat more awkward. I know heaps of people who go out of their way to disable receipts and status notifications in their chat apps (iMessage etc). I've even been criticized for not having them disabled in iMessage.
- ge0rg 9y ago
  I tend to agree for privacy reasons, but message delivery receipts are really useful, especially when the other party is using a mobile connection.
_e 9y ago
Thank you for alerting me to Yaxim. Yaxim looks like default bitchx. Yaxim's docs show that you can theme it [0] but I wish they had a repo of existing themes. Compare jIRCii default theme vs jIRCii+analog theme [1]. If an application is going to occupy prime real estate on my desktop for a good portion of time then I want it to look nice. [0] https://doc.poez.io/themes.html https://doc.poez.io/themes.html [1] http://jircii.dashnine.org/media http://jircii.dashnine.org/media

louiz 9y ago

I also wrote my own XMPP client (https://poez.io https://poez.io), but since I also use IRC I decided to write a gateway. This way I can use poezio for everything.