IRC is sadly going away slowly. Which is a shame, it’s a great protocol that is easy to implement and simple to work with. Biggest problem I see is its inability to embed images and other multimedia. Had that been the case protocol would live on I feel. We just needed few more channel modes, some that ban or allow specific multimedia and inline image support and we are good.
Some people, if not most who use IRC, would claim otherwise, but there’s a reason why Slack became popular even though it’s shitty electron application.
There are multiple IRC clients that render inline images just fine and also some very nice web clients that allow posting such images directly from the app.
The main problem of IRC is IMHO that the large networks refuse to implement most of the newer IRCv3 standards or alternatively provide multi-client bouncers to their users.
This would require an HTML image upload service, which is out of scope for IRCv3 protocol specs.
But nothing stops a server implementation from providing this, and as already said several client+bouncer combinations already support media uploads very well.
The slow moving isn’t the problem of the IRCv3 specs, the issue is the adoption by the large networks and subsequently the clients (which rarely implement features the vast majority of their users on the large networks can’t use).
There’s a “new” draft for version 3 being worked on but to be honest they are not addressing in my opinion the right features. Yay, we are going to get unicode nicknames? I think people are fine with what is there now. But not being able to paste code or images, now that’s a real hindrance.
Exactly. If you have a simple protocol, but then everyone layers a bunch of proprietary extensions on, is it really a simple protocol anymore? Or is it just a bunch of chat clients that only kind of talk to each other anymore?
IRC is sadly going away slowly. Which is a shame, it’s a great protocol that is easy to implement and simple to work with. Biggest problem I see is its inability to embed images and other multimedia. Had that been the case protocol would live on I feel. We just needed few more channel modes, some that ban or allow specific multimedia and inline image support and we are good.
Some people, if not most who use IRC, would claim otherwise, but there’s a reason why Slack became popular even though it’s shitty electron application.
There are multiple IRC clients that render inline images just fine and also some very nice web clients that allow posting such images directly from the app.
The main problem of IRC is IMHO that the large networks refuse to implement most of the newer IRCv3 standards or alternatively provide multi-client bouncers to their users.
Adiirc has an option to do inline images. The client pulls the image in on its own. Makes it look similar to Discord.
IRCv3 doesn’t bring multimedia as far as I know. There are good changes to the protocol proposed, but they are moving too slow.
This would require an HTML image upload service, which is out of scope for IRCv3 protocol specs.
But nothing stops a server implementation from providing this, and as already said several client+bouncer combinations already support media uploads very well.
The slow moving isn’t the problem of the IRCv3 specs, the issue is the adoption by the large networks and subsequently the clients (which rarely implement features the vast majority of their users on the large networks can’t use).
Yeah, I’d assume there would be a level of resistance to changes from big networks.
That’s one of its best features as far as I’m concerned, and one of the reasons I still use it every day.
I wonder if multiple IRC clients all agreed at the same time to extend the protocol by rendering markdown in the messages if that would help.
There’s a “new” draft for version 3 being worked on but to be honest they are not addressing in my opinion the right features. Yay, we are going to get unicode nicknames? I think people are fine with what is there now. But not being able to paste code or images, now that’s a real hindrance.
Convos.chat has both those features, via an built in image server and pastebin service. In addition it renders Markdown just fine.
That’s great, although protocol level support would be preferable.
Exactly. If you have a simple protocol, but then everyone layers a bunch of proprietary extensions on, is it really a simple protocol anymore? Or is it just a bunch of chat clients that only kind of talk to each other anymore?