[GLLUG] Emacs IRC Client Trouble

[Marr]

On Friday 25 January 2008 12:21am, Chick Tower wrote:
> Just use GAIM, Pidgin, or Kopete, Bill.  They come with Slackware.

I had done an 'apropos irc' command and 'BitchX' was the only thing that came 
up (and was truly appropriate among the false hits). For some reason, I 
had "brain lock" yesterday and didn't think to just check the KDE menus for 
IRC-ish applications. When I did that, I saw these:

   Gaim, KSirc, Kopete, and XChat

Of these GUI clients, XChat looks the simplest, which is exactly what I want, 
given my limited needs for IRC, but I haven't yet tried any of them while 
online. It's obviously not as pretty as a GUI client like XChat, but, quite 
frankly, BitchX (or Emacs 'erc', if I could make it work) is all I really 
need. Nevertheless, I will try some of the GUI clients too.

I don't know where your 'Pidgin' comes from, Chick. I don't have it on my 
Slackware 11.0 (+ some Dropline Gnome) installation. A 'locate -i pidgin' 
command turns up nothing either. Maybe that's a Slackware 12.0 feature -- 
gotta fire up my Slackware 12.0 rig sometime and check.

> That's one of my pet peeves with emacs.  It can be adapted to do almost
> anything, which is not the Unix/Linux philosophy of small utilities to
> do one job supremely well.  But why would you bother to modify a text
> editor to be a chat client, or a Usenet client?  Just because you can
> does not mean it's the right tool for the job.  I could wash dishes in
> my toilet, but I'll pass.

Glad to hear that, especially if you're bringing the dishes to the next GLLUG 
barbecue! ;^)

Three reasons, IMHO, to modify the editor to do other things.... One is that 
you get all of your familiar keystrokes without having to learn a whole new 
set. (I'll stick my neck out here and guess that there are several useful 
commands in Emacs' IRC client which mimic the editor, like splitting and 
joining frames and/or windows.) Second is that you can run it without X11, 
since Emacs can run in a console, right after boot up, which I often do, 
especially when doing kernel module hacking. Third is for the built-in things 
like a spell-checker, which I frequently use in Emacs, usually on a single 
word that I often forget the proper spelling of, like "separately".

Generally, I don't think an IRC client is the best argument for the 
Emacs "kitchen sink" philosophy, but an email client and a source code 
control mechanism (and probably many others) are good arguments for 
inclusion.

If you want Emacs without all the "extras", just run 'jed' (which comes with 
Slackware, BTW -- see 'man jed').

Anyway, thanks for all the advice, guys. As always, it is much appreciated!

Regards,
Bill Marr