Talk on multiple IRC channels at once?

Question

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?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

Found the answer from a user on Freenode's #xchat (thx Khisanth).

There is a perl script plugin for Xchat called ShowAllChannels which does almost exactly what I described. It creates a new window which shows all incoming messages and then you can address individual channels or all at once using existing XChat commands.

/msg #ChannelName ipsum lorem

or

/allchanl say ipsum lorem

One Gotcha that is not documented on the script site. To get addressing to work properly you have to change a variable in the .pl script.

Line 34 reads : 'shared_tab' => 0,
Change to : 'shared_tab' => 1,

This will cause the scrip to create a separate 'all channels' window for each server you are on. Unless you change this, you won't be able to /msg individual channels from the global 'all channels' window since XChat will not see you as being on any server when you are in the 'all channels' window.

Answer 3

mIRC uses Windows' "Multiple Document Interface" API, which lets it display multiple channel windows inside a container window. Restore (un-maximize) your channel window with the controls underneath the main window's controls, and you can arrange them how you want. There's even a button for automatic tiling.

Another client that can do this is AdiIRC. It seems very similar to mIRC, with only slightly better font rendering.

This is not interleaved chat, but I would consider it a "modern way of doing it" and hopefully answers what you want -- reading multiple channels -- if not literally what you asked.

Many clients let you undock channels to become independent windows on your desktop, but there are no means for arbitrary tiling or moving all windows between displays simultaneously.

To my knowledge, as of the time I'm writing this, now that KVIrc has removed support for MDI, mIRC and AdiIRC are the only IRC clients in the world capable of this feat, of all clients in their current versions. irssi arguably qualifies as well, so I'm not trying to ignore it, but as it's more of a text-based, terminal client, it likely doesn't appeal to the same use cases.

Answer 4

If you use weechat, you can use the chanmon.pl plugin to interleave multiple channels together. YOu can install it inside weechat-curses using /script command inside Weechat. For some more information on it, you can look at http://dev.weechat.org/post/2012/08/14/Scripts-manager

Although I guess it doesn't let you respond to the channels in question, I believe. But you can quite possibly add on that functionality.