[9fans] irc client (maybe server) project looking for contributors

[9fans] irc client (maybe server) project looking for contributors

[Matt]

Okay, we're developing the irc thing at work. So while my head is full of
irc stuff I'd like to take the opportunity to develop some IRC stuff for
plan9 / Inferno.

I've done the bot but it was pretty simplistic.

I'm inspired to do a client (and I kinda promised ;).

Is anyone interested in contributing?
Even if it's just at the design and planning stage.

I'd welcome anyone's input.
I've got plenty of ideas of what I'd like to see.

I know I said it'd be Limbo on Inferno but that's not set in stone.
Acme strikes me as a good application host for irc which would make it
"cross platform" (plan9 AND inferno!)
On the other hand I'd like to get to grips with tk on Inferno (and then I
might get a free T-Shirt too!)

Matt

Re: [9fans] irc client (maybe server) project looking for contributors

[Theo Honohan]

On Friday 15 June, Matt wrote:
>
> Okay, we're developing the irc thing at work. So while my head is full of
> irc stuff I'd like to take the opportunity to develop some IRC stuff for
> plan9 / Inferno.
> 
> I've done the bot but it was pretty simplistic.
> 
> I'm inspired to do a client (and I kinda promised ;).
> 
> Is anyone interested in contributing?
> Even if it's just at the design and planning stage.

(First of all, I'm not a regular IRC user, so excuse my total lack of
clue, and arrogance in making any suggestion at all!)

Things that I think could be cool about IRC support on Plan 9:

* an ircfs which supported a simple file-based IRC interface, and DCC
  file transfer in an obvious way.

* a "pass-through" ircproxyfs, which would provide detachable proxy
  functionality (like the existing "dircproxy") using an underlying
  ircfs.  It would be natural for this to provide an IRC server
  interface to the network, as well as the ircfs interface.

* a new implementation of the "Comic Chat" UI concept.  This was
  presented at Siggraph 96.  Regardless of how you feel about the
  usability of the idea, it's a lot of fun to mess around with, and
  a good demo.
  http://grail.cs.washington.edu/pub/papers/comics.pdf 

  Microsoft's implementation suffered from a number of problems:

  * the cartoons looked bad due to poor image resampling algorithms and
    primitive compositing; a version that produced nicer images would be
    a good way to show off the new Plan 9 compositing imaging model.
    (Maybe Reneé French could be persuaded to produce a character or
    two...)

  * the killer: Microsoft Chat produced offensive in-band annotations
    (hex strings at the beginning of each line) to communicate the
    emotions and personae of the illustrated characters.

    It's hard to see how to solve this problem in general.  However,
    within a small community of Comic Chat users, you could provide a
    kind of IRC proxy server which shared their annotated contributions
    between its users, and also relayed them, in expurgated form, to the
    real IRC network.  They could then enjoy the benefits(!) of the
    annotations when they interacted with each other, while still being
    non-obnoxious participants on a normal IRC network.

    Of course, you could implement such a proxy by creating another
    version of ircproxyfs which created and used a number of ircfs clients.
    Have I suggested enough fileservers yet?


I guess rather a lot of that hinges on whether you think Comic Chat is a
fun idea or not.  I can't imagine using it every day.  It has a high
wow-factor-to-complexity ratio, though.

If it's to be written in limbo, of course, you don't get the new
compositing model, so the comic creation side of it is a less attractive
job.

Theo

Re: [9fans] irc client (maybe server) project looking for contributors

[Boyd Roberts]

> I know I said it'd be Limbo on Inferno but that's not set in stone.

do it with limbo.  string mangling event driven stuff, limbo gets
it right.

> Acme strikes me as a good application host for irc which would make it
> "cross platform" (plan9 AND inferno!)

therein lies the road to emacs.

Re: [9fans] irc client (maybe server) project looking for contributors

[Scott Schwartz]

| > Acme strikes me as a good application host for irc which would make it
| > "cross platform" (plan9 AND inferno!)
| 
| therein lies the road to emacs.

Nay, xedit.  An editor with an external extension langauge.  Way cool.

Re: [9fans] irc client (maybe server) project looking for contributors

[andrey mirtchovski]

my irc client used C and regex to parse the server messages.. it had some
CTCP implemented, only one channel at a time and things like messages..

i still have a screenshot of it, but no source anymore :(

i'll see if anyone who i gave it to still has it (lucho?)

andrey

On Fri, 15 Jun 2001, Boyd Roberts wrote:

> > I know I said it'd be Limbo on Inferno but that's not set in stone.
> 
> do it with limbo.  string mangling event driven stuff, limbo gets
> it right.
> 
> > Acme strikes me as a good application host for irc which would make it
> > "cross platform" (plan9 AND inferno!)
> 
> therein lies the road to emacs.
> 
> 
> 

Re: [9fans] irc client (maybe server) project looking for contributors

[cLIeNUX user]

humbubba@smart.net
>Okay, we're developing the irc thing at work. So while my head is full of
>irc stuff I'd like to take the opportunity to develop some IRC stuff for
>plan9 / Inferno.
>
>I've done the bot but it was pretty simplistic.
>
>I'm inspired to do a client (and I kinda promised ;).
>
>Is anyone interested in contributing?
>Even if it's just at the design and planning stage.

I'm interested in contributing just a design :o)

IRC doesn't scale well. EFnet is the biggest IRC network, and it's at
capacity at about 50k users with the trunk servers needing big pipes, t1
or better. Maybe t3, I don't recall clearly.

When the topic comes up I try to promulgate a cli-serv/moderator model.
The idea is to get message traffic distributed over the cli-servs, which
is analagous to what are now the clients, and leave control communications
like joins, nick changes and so on on the moderators, which are now the
servers. This is re-factoring the boundary between client and server,
while remaining the same in overall functionality. The idea is that each
client is one of the message servers for the channels it is on, and just
those channels. Each channel then is it's own tree topology, like IRC as a
whole is now, and the moderators control things by having all the info on
all connectivity. It's a very tricky design challenge though.

Another thing I suggest is opless channels. 

Rick Hohensee
http://linux01.gwdg.de/~rhohen

 



>
>I'd welcome anyone's input.
>I've got plenty of ideas of what I'd like to see.
>
>I know I said it'd be Limbo on Inferno but that's not set in stone.
>Acme strikes me as a good application host for irc which would make it
>"cross platform" (plan9 AND inferno!)
>On the other hand I'd like to get to grips with tk on Inferno (and then I
>might get a free T-Shirt too!)
>
>Matt

Re: [9fans] irc client (maybe server) project looking for contributors

[forsyth]

>>If it's to be written in limbo, of course, you don't get the new
>>compositing model, so the comic creation side of it is a less attractive
>>job.

just you wait

Re: [9fans] irc client (maybe server) project looking for contributors

[forsyth]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 173 bytes --]

>>Acme strikes me as a good application host for irc which would make it
>>"cross platform" (plan9 AND inferno!)

beto did a basic irc client in alef for old old acme


[-- Attachment #2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 2587 bytes --]

From: "Matt" <matt@proweb.co.uk>
To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Cc: <hangar18@einstein.ssz.com>
Subject: [9fans] irc client (maybe server) project looking for contributors
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 18:18:25 +0100
Message-ID: <018a01c0f5bf$300b9d00$6401a8c0@freeze2k>

Okay, we're developing the irc thing at work. So while my head is full of
irc stuff I'd like to take the opportunity to develop some IRC stuff for
plan9 / Inferno.

I've done the bot but it was pretty simplistic.

I'm inspired to do a client (and I kinda promised ;).

Is anyone interested in contributing?
Even if it's just at the design and planning stage.

I'd welcome anyone's input.
I've got plenty of ideas of what I'd like to see.

I know I said it'd be Limbo on Inferno but that's not set in stone.
Acme strikes me as a good application host for irc which would make it
"cross platform" (plan9 AND inferno!)
On the other hand I'd like to get to grips with tk on Inferno (and then I
might get a free T-Shirt too!)

Matt