IRC done right with ii
IRC is a guilty pleasure. Logically, I know I've never gotten any value out of it. It's largely vacuous chat. Hanging out on ##c on freenode, any reasonable lurkers like myself are mesmerized by the comedy of people who are a) students trying to get homework "help" or b) embittered veterans who enjoy helping people like Nurse Ratchet enjoys helping her patients.
Nonetheless, I can't stay away. I guess I like the activity clicking down my screen every few seconds - I feel important and connected (don't think about that too hard).
ii
is the only IRC client that has made sense to me. Rather
than try to wrap the protocol into a custom interface with a custom scripting
setup, ii gives you the protocol as a filesystem, and lets you
define your own interface & pluggability through standard tools or shell
capabilities. And at < 500 lines of dependency-free code, it's light as a
feather.
So, how to use ii effectively? You guessed it, I have a shell
function! The function sends the output of one channel to the console,
formatted my way (= no presence messages or timestamps). screen
is used to set up multiple windows.
Sending a message requires
echo'ing to a flat file, but since I'm a lurker it's fine with me
if it's hard to accidentally spam a channel when I think a different window is
focused (a sadly common thing in a tiling window manager).
Here's the shell function from my .bashrc
# First form defaults to irc.freenode.net
function jn {
IRCNAME=aurous
# init
IRC_HOST=irc.freenode.net
if [ $2 ]; then
IRC_HOST=$2
fi
SERVER_ROOT=~/irc/$IRC_HOST
CHANNEL_ROOT=$SERVER_ROOT/$1
# Truncate old irc log to last few lines
if [ -f $CHANNEL_ROOT/out ]; then
tail -n 1000 $CHANNEL_ROOT/out > $CHANNEL_ROOT/outnew
rm $CHANNEL_ROOT/out
mv $CHANNEL_ROOT/outnew $CHANNEL_ROOT/out
fi
# Start ii for this server if not running
#if ! ( ii procs get command-line started with same server
if( [ ! "`pgrep ii | xargs -I xxx echo /proc/xxx/cmdline | xargs -I xxx grep $IRC_HOST xxx`" ] ); then
ii -n $IRCNAME -s $IRC_HOST &
sleep 1
fi
# Join the channel
echo "/j $1" > $SERVER_ROOT/in
sleep 1
# Check that we're connected to the channel
if [ -f $CHANNEL_ROOT/out ]; then
# tail
tail -f $CHANNEL_ROOT/out |
while read ln; do
# strip presence lns strip date/time stamp let grep hilite nicks
echo $ln | grep -v "\-\!\-" | sed -e 's/^.................//' | grep "<(.*\)>"
done
else
echo Failure, couldnt read $CHANNEL_ROOT/out, probably no such channel
fi
}