Talk on multiple IRC channels at once

chatircmircxchat

I seem to remember, back in '91 or so, that the console-based IRCII implemention on the Solaris box that first got me on the net would let me /Join multiple channels on a given network such that, as new channels were joined, they would start scrolling to the single console view. Let's call it the 'interleaved conversation' chat paradigm. Am I rembering this correctly? More importantly, is there a modern way of doing this in any of the GUI-based clients?

I'm surprised this isn't a common desire/feature because I think it would greatly improve the experience, especially on channels with high SNR. For example, If I'm working on a project I may connect to Freenode and join : #Qt,#OpenGL,#C++. As it is now, with mIRC,Xchat, I have to manually flip between pages just to see whats being said and to reply.

What I envision would go more like this (using only 2 channels for simplicity)

>/join #QT #OpenGL

< [QT] QtChannelUser: Hello TwoPixelGrid.
< [OpenGL] OpenGLChannelUser: Hi there TwoPixelGrid.

> @QT: Hi QtChannelUser
> @OpenGL: Hello againOpenGLChannelUser
> And this message is going out to all my channels.

Do I have to write a new client or is this already out there?

Best Answer

As author of the previously mentioned Show All Channels script, there are a few additional points I would like to make.

  1. The default value of "shared_tab" is already 1, not 0. In this setting, all messages from all networks show up into the same tab.
  2. Rather than modifying the source code, the value can be changed to 0 (which is what TwoPixelGrid wanted) by doing: /sc_set shared_tab 0 (this should now be clear on the scripts page)
  3. If using the shared tab, you could use the Do At script to allow for the following slightly convoluted syntax: "/doat #ChannelName say Message here".
    • This may get slightly long, but at least #ChannelName can be completed with tab complete, and you could also create a user command of "sayat" (or any other word) which would allow the phrase to be shortened to "/sayat #ChannelName Message here".
    • The Settings -> Advanced -> User Command may be specified with "sayat" and "doat %2 say &3"

That should cover it. I already mentioned these things in #xchat, however since this question may show up for someone else, I figured it should be answered here as well.

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