2005-10-11 Emacs IRC Software

Yeah, I moved back from Colloquy to an Emacs-based IRC client: rcirc. Easy to install (one file), easy to hack. ERC turned out to be somwhat unwieldy, mentally. Getting the autoloads right wasted a few minutes every time I had to reinstall it. I do that from time to time as I move to a new developer machine and install Emacs. Having a very simple setup of external packages is a bonus in such situations.

rcirc

ERC

Anyway, rcirc was so hackable that I added two features I missed in no time: Giving nicks unique colors – something I got from a Colloquy theme by Les Orchard of 0xDECAFBAD! I liked it, I wanted it. rcircColoredNicks.

0xDECAFBAD

rcircColoredNicks

The other feature was `/ignore`. rcircIgnore.

rcircIgnore

And being able to talk to RyanYeske as he developed a new solution for rcircAutoAuthentication was also cool.

rcircAutoAuthentication

So basically, Colloquy has the features I need and a Cocoa interface, where as rcirc has the features I need and uses Emacs.

Give me Emacs any day! 😄

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