What do you most hate about your IRC client?

Ashen · Idler Joined: 05 Jan 2004 Posts: 284

I first started out on ircle.
Good things:
Nice sound effects
pretty, easy to use, nice windowing system
efficient, in its own way.
Problems:
it does a /userhost || /whois on everyone onjoin to channels - which means that opers on the (imho, lame) Unreal network that I used to use got annoyed when they got repeatedly /whois'ed [they were annoyed enough to tell me off, but they wouldn't set +W... figures].........
It also did not support decent scripting.
And it only runs on MacOS :-S

After I left the Mac OS, I used kvirc version b.1.0.0. (on the SuSE install on my iMac)
and I loved it.
It was very much in the spirit of linux - technical, with a barely developed GUI but lots of functionality.
Good things:
It did everything I wanted. It worked, it did scripts, it had a nice gui, it was efficient.
It was like mirc for linux, but much much better and free.
Problems:
does not support ~,&, etc
was slow (probably my computer)
very basic scripting only
very basic gui
some parts had small bugs in them

When I upgraded my computer, I upgraded from kvirc 1.0.0 to 3.0.0 - and I absolutely hated
3.0.0 with a vengance. Its gui was so bad It wasn't even usable - windows would appear in the wrong places, navbars/userlists would be sized so as to be litterally illegible... the gui had been improved, but made it impossible to organise properly, and it went too much toward eye-candy at the sacrifice of functionality.

When I started getting into *nix shells / commandline interfaces, I switched, briefly to BitchX,
and found that the quit messages, autoignores, way it dealt with console, etc, seemed lame and more geared to a highly combative, slightly spammy client then a proper IRC interface to me.

Eventually I started using irssi (http://www.irssi.org) - apparently the second most (if I hear rumours correctly) used client after mirc......... it's simple, sleek, efficient, has all needed functions except scripts and defences like autoignore.
It's a peaceful client that is just simple, efficient, and direct about everything it does.
It's totally designed around usability and functionality with virtually no sops to having a nice GUI.
It's also incredibly configurable.
Problems? Well, it lacks scripting support unless you know perl (I do, but still), it doesn't have sufficient anti-flood control, and it can be tricky to modify. It also lacks documentation, I find.
And it doesn't support the Unreal/Ultimate/etc +qa chanmodes.... that's not a problem though, I don't chat on networks that use those ircds, and there is a patch avalible for irssi that fixes that anyway.
Still, I love it Smile

All in all, I'd say the following things would be stuff I require from clients:
* 1) functionality (it must work. The commands must be logical and do what they say they will)
* 2) efficiency (it must be fast and not bother with wastes of time such as colors)
* 3) sleek interface (not eye candy, just bare minimum)
* 4) configurability (it should work the way *I* like)
* 5) compatibliity (with a wide range of ircds)

</my take on various clients>

It'd be interesting to see what proportion of clients use what IRCds........ I have a theory
that more irssi users use peaceful, lax enforcement nets (like small bahamut/ircu/etc nets),
BitchX users use more dangerous/unstable networks (like Undernet, EFnet)... and mirc users just use whatever their friends use....
I dunno about any of this, I'm very unsure if this holds up, but I do think it would be interesting to see what the correlations were between the philosophy and ircd of networks and the versions of the clients that use them.

[DiMENSiON] · Eleet Joined: 06 Sep 2003 Posts: 670

I use mIRC and i think it's top quality. It's only fault i find is the DCC exploits other than that it does everything i want/need.

uchat · Idler Joined: 17 Mar 2004 Posts: 335

mIRC has had 2 major exploits in 10 years ... both in the last 12 months .. I don't count that as bad.

[DiMENSiON] · Eleet Joined: 06 Sep 2003 Posts: 670

It's the worst problem.. Personally i use mIRC 6.01 and it kick ass over all the other mIRC's imo.

uchat · Idler Joined: 17 Mar 2004 Posts: 335

hahaha .. I find that funny since almost all of the difference between 6.01 and 6.15 are bug fixes.

So in short you and I have the same features .. but I have less known bugs.

w00t · Posted: Jun 22, 2004 5:52pm Post subject:

Now now.

Let this thread not degenerate into the religious wars which IRC, and all things technical seem to consistently attract.

mIRC itself doesnt seem to have that many problems, the problems seem to be mostly in the scripting features, or in third-party applications affecting mIRC (ala Internet Explorer)

But then, no software is bug free.

To conclude:
Use whatever you want. Be it irssi, cgiirc, xchat, virc, jirc, pjirc, mirc, snak... even telnet. It's your decision. Nobody can take that from you. Adn to discriminate on the grounds of IRC client, to me just seems plain abhorrent.

Just my $0.02

uchat · Idler Joined: 17 Mar 2004 Posts: 335

w00t · Posted: Jun 22, 2004 6:55pm Post subject:

No, I saw the humor Razz

The thing which I saw was the POTENTIAL for it to be misinterpreted. I mean, how many times have we seen this scene disintegrate into mindless fury (case in point, we have around equal amounts of xchat & mirc users.... NEVER try tell either which is better Razz

. Mind you, makes for some interesting involved IRC Razz

)

Let me see:
Services, IRCd, Clients. I've seen wars on all three now Razz

(even fought in a few :/)

[DiMENSiON] · Eleet Joined: 06 Sep 2003 Posts: 670

Now you've made me look like a idiot. Which i am but i don't like to broacast it ;) . Anyway, i find 6.01 more stable than the other versions and also 6.1+ have different design, same feautures but a revised design and i don't like it.