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Is there a reason IRC couldn't look like slack to the user? kiwiirc is an opensource webUI IRC client (demo at https://kiwiirc.com/ https://kiwiirc.com/). To m

Is there a reason IRC couldn't look like slack to the user? kiwiirc is an opensource webUI IRC client (demo at https://kiwiirc.com/ https://kiwiirc.com/). To my untrained eye it looks slack-ish, but not being a slack-native I'm not really sure what Slack's draw is and whether its something webUI clients for IRC can't do.

russdpale 8y ago
Wow, that is pretty darn nice for an IRC client!
rakoo 8y ago
The UI is the easiest thing to fix and as you have shown already has been for some time. What separates IRC and the rest is all the features you would expect by default in a messenger of the 21st century: - history - with search - logins - simple bots - automatic content fetching (wiki/youtube Links, pics and gifs) - file transfers that just work - image pasting - message editing And probably others. Yes, those features exist in one way or another in IRC. The point is not whether you can or not; the point is how much time and energy do I want to spend to install and maintain those. I may have had the patience to do it a few years back, but I value other things now.
- jenscow 8y ago
  To many, not having such features on IRC is a bonus.
- caf 8y ago
  As a sidebar, from what I can tell the term "bot" for an automated agent accessible through chat originated on IRC.
  - rakoo 8y ago
    For sure, credit where it's due. However IRC doesn't beat the ease of installation that Slack providers for bots.
dewey 8y ago
There's not, and there are services like https://www.irccloud.com/ https://www.irccloud.com/ that "slackify" IRC so you don't have to deal with ZNC, making your logs searchable,...
lmm 8y ago
IRC can't ever have authentication, because most clients won't support it. You can't have conversations that rely on rich text, code blocks with syntax highlighting, embedded images, or web previews: these things are possible (in some cases there's more than one way of doing them) but some users will always be using clients that don't support them, and will regard you as the problem if you try to create an expectation that clients should support those things. In turn this makes useful integrations hard: you can have a bot that sends an alert message that heap usage is high on your server, but it's not going to be able to include a graph. IRC can't ever have server-side history and synchronise read status between devices; you can run another server that does that for you (whether that be IRCCloud, ZNC or something else), but at that point you're not actually using IRC, you're using that server's protocol.
- detaro 8y ago
  "Most" important clients support SASL authentication already.
  - lmm 8y ago
    Sure. But good luck persuading a network to go authenticated-only, or even configuring your private server that way. It's not impossible but it's very much not the culture and not where the documentation/support will guide you.
- nobleach 8y ago
  Having to share Gists instead of inlining code blocks, and (of less importance) reaction gifs, was a huge non-starter.

russdpale 8y ago

Wow, that is pretty darn nice for an IRC client!

rakoo 8y ago

The UI is the easiest thing to fix and as you have shown already has been for some time. What separates IRC and the rest is all the features you would expect by default in a messenger of the 21st century: - history - with search - logins - simple bots - automatic content fetching (wiki/youtube Links, pics and gifs) - file transfers that just work - image pasting - message editing And probably others. Yes, those features exist in one way or another in IRC. The point is not whether you can or not; the point is how much time and energy do I want to spend to install and maintain those. I may have had the patience to do it a few years back, but I value other things now.

jenscow 8y ago
To many, not having such features on IRC is a bonus.
caf 8y ago
As a sidebar, from what I can tell the term "bot" for an automated agent accessible through chat originated on IRC.
- rakoo 8y ago
  For sure, credit where it's due. However IRC doesn't beat the ease of installation that Slack providers for bots.

dewey 8y ago

There's not, and there are services like https://www.irccloud.com/ https://www.irccloud.com/ that "slackify" IRC so you don't have to deal with ZNC, making your logs searchable,...

lmm 8y ago

IRC can't ever have authentication, because most clients won't support it. You can't have conversations that rely on rich text, code blocks with syntax highlighting, embedded images, or web previews: these things are possible (in some cases there's more than one way of doing them) but some users will always be using clients that don't support them, and will regard you as the problem if you try to create an expectation that clients should support those things. In turn this makes useful integrations hard: you can have a bot that sends an alert message that heap usage is high on your server, but it's not going to be able to include a graph. IRC can't ever have server-side history and synchronise read status between devices; you can run another server that does that for you (whether that be IRCCloud, ZNC or something else), but at that point you're not actually using IRC, you're using that server's protocol.

detaro 8y ago
"Most" important clients support SASL authentication already.
- lmm 8y ago
  Sure. But good luck persuading a network to go authenticated-only, or even configuring your private server that way. It's not impossible but it's very much not the culture and not where the documentation/support will guide you.
nobleach 8y ago
Having to share Gists instead of inlining code blocks, and (of less importance) reaction gifs, was a huge non-starter.