When an Open Protocol has existed for over Three decades, it is bound 2 have interfaces written 4 it that satisfy niches that u could Not Imagine. This year I've been playing with an IRC client called ii — among other things, on my "Oasis", my Side Laptop, where I can omit any Functionality until I can figure out how exactly I want 2 implement it (While my Desktop has a setup that Just Works). This client is extraordinarily simple; ppl when they think of Minimalist Software may still think of smth that has a Frontend & a Backend, even if the former is a TUI, but how about a client where the Frontend is essentially Absent? All it does is expose the hierarchy of "Network to #channel or User" to the UNIX filesystem: @ the bottom of this is a FIFO/pipe "in" & the channel or User Output file "out". Plaintext, the Data IRC is made of, is a Universal, Plastic material manipulable by the entirety of a Unix-like OS. A Rudimentary frontend for ii, to send data to the "in" file 1 only needs to echo "data" to it with double Chevron >> (& some while loop such as "while read -r line; do echo $line >> ", recurses so that u can send as many messages as u like); Appositely 2 view the "out" file, one just needs to call "tail -f" upon it. & already for this Basic implementation u can mirror some functionality of "more Featureful" irc clients: sed in the "tail" pipeline to ignore users, or to colorize output, & awk to print an Alert whenever someone mentions your name. Very likely u will have to Wrap everything u wanna do with your own shell scripts, but if a non-developer like me can do that Easily, Every1 can.
But if u desire smth "More", then there are independent, robust projects written for Viewing text, like Multitail, & Composing text, like Kakoune (a vim-like text editor). If you're already using programs for Other Things, u r Reusing their code to chat, & in their general feature-set may allow things that someone programming a message display or text entry field would Never think of. On my personal IRC server, I have a bot bridging certain channels of a "private" discord server (although Nothing on Discord is private or even belonging to the end user), just so I can use ii to type in them, & on my end, a single RegEx line in Multitail omits the nick of the Bot & leaves just the nicks of my friends. I cannot think of another platform offering such a depth of quality control.
& On the text-entry side, Kakoune's general Workflow of composing selections before performing actions on them is Brilliant for it. Every chat program in existence clears the message that is sent, but with a Robust set of commands for selecting arbitrary text, that would not need to happen. Mostly I have <enter> while in Insert mode Select the line, cat it out to the in-pipe in the same directory, then create a new input line. Resending any line (after having made desired Edits to them) this way is Trivial. I've thought abt introducing certain keybinds that are Filename Agnostic, so that Any file I open, a poem 4 example, is a text-entry field to my Favorite channels. Also, Tab Completion of words Already in the file, is configured into the editor By Default, so typing gets faster the More u Do it.
Unfortunately, IRC is considered Dead & used only by ppl Soon to be, So I do not get to use this Bespoke arrangement of programs as often as I want to. Proprietary social media platforms have the Crutch of Social Magnetism: no matter how Shittily the app is coded, the focus is not on the code but on the People using it. So many amazing ppl are stuck using Software that Only Gets Worse, because most of them would have to Decide to move somewhere else @ Once. The software I use only gets better, because it is Free, Open, Simple, & Extensible, but I couldn't configure it Overnight. It seems once Discord falls, two apps I know of may be there to Immediately rescue its Userbase & a new revolution in the Enshittification Cycle will begin. Even tho Matrix is an open protocol w/ all the Bells&Whistles, I fear it won't be ready in time, since *failed to decrypt message* Oops, Sorry, the server written for Self-Hosted instances within the Matrix Fediverse has had a Memory Leak . An Aside is that it probably wouldnt run anyway on the Toaster I got for free, the same Toaster i am hosting the Aforementioned IRC server, the discord bridge, a Limnoria bot, & soon a Bouncer b/c i take my Thinkpad out w/ me.













