Idle thoughts about IRC

[cologic]

I notice a tendency here among some to want to recreate IRC, to some degree.

I've been toying with the idea of just going all the way with that and implementing DC-on-IRC as a set of modifications to IRC clients, with the following changes:

Nearly the entire client-hub protocol is ignored, and the IRC equivalents used in its place (so normal IRC clients can chat and such as well).

PRIVMSG and NOTICE, which can be targetted either to a specific user or an entire channel (as well as many other possibilities, but those two are enough to replicate DC's broadcast and non-broadcast messages) would be used to send search queries, GetINFOs, MyINFOs, CTMs, and RevCTMs. The standard DC client-client protocol could then be used.

Unfortunately, the quicklist proposal wouldn't really be adaptable, so far as I know, to this, as it would require special support from the server (or a bot sitting in each IRC-DC enabled channel); this would only be worth trying if unmodified IRC servers and networks could be used.

Advantages include IRC's ability to scale to a greater degree right now than DC, its more mature servers, the more widespread support for SSL client-hub connections (not an important feature, but nice...), its separate existence as a more legitimate chat network than DC, so fewer firewalls block it outright, and clients for more platforms.

On the other hand, it's probably not worth much effort, now that DC is fairly functional on its own, and IRC is a relatively complex protocol (compared to DC) to which to tie oneself.

I thought I'd bring it up, though, especially in light of the "Distributed DC" thread. Thoughts/reactions?

[ivulfusbar]

you can use CTCP for alot ofcourse.

[cologic]

PRIVMSG and NOTIFY are used by CTCP, so my description includes that; that's probably the easiest way to transfer arbitrary, non-chat messages between users. DCC, however, also related to CTCP, however, I dislike: it's not indendent enough from the IRC server in its operation.