irken: A tiny hackable full-featured IRC client
28 points by dzwdz
28 points by dzwdz
This is a graphical IRC client written in only 1290 lines of code (including blank lines and comments!) using Tcl/Tk. I would've put that in the title, but I didn't want to editorialize it.
I really ought to learn Tcl/Tk someday. I was always skeptical of how well it'd work for more complex programs, but this project seems encouraging.
IRC is a fun protocol to make something for regardless of language. In its core it is dead simple allowing you to get started with very little code as demonstrated by this client.
Even a "server" implementation is fairly simple.
Of course, making it more feature complete will also make more complex. As IRC as many older protocols and standards is more or less many standards in a trench coat with some room left over for interpenetration.
But it is a fun exercise dealing with two datastreams and just live having to parse out what you need.
Implementing terminal emulation over ssh is another one, but slightly more obtuse dealing with all ANSI characters.
As IRC as many older protocols and standards is more or less many standards in a trench coat with some room left over for interpenetration.
https://modern.ircdocs.horse/ should be a decent baseline that works for all software currently deployed, we welcome PRs to fix anything that is missing. And for the more advanced features there's https://ircv3.net/irc/
Agree, it's a fun protocol!
As a teenager I learned C and networking by writing an IRC bot with plugin support, it also could send and receive files using XDCC
I spent a couple of years in my twenties using Tcl/Tk as my daily driver. Oddly enough, I wish that I had encountered the language later in my life, as, even when I was a Tcl partisan, I didn't have the maturity to truly appreciate the truth: Tcl is one of the better Lisps.