LinuxBBQ

Because we can. Most of us here use either irssi or weechat. Both can be themed out with looks and scripts.

Irssi easily can be themed by adding .theme files and using either while inside a session with /load [theme.py] (use your tab completion), or have your theme load automatically with /SET theme [theme.py]. Look for a suitable theme here. Of course you can create your very own theme from scratch.

Weechat does allow for themes, but still in alpha stage, and there are limited available, but fwiw, you can find them here. You can also make your way through the ~/.weechat/weechat.conf file and make some changes piecemeal like. Caution though, weechat will re-write your new config, so I'd suggest, having weechat open, make some mods in the conf file, then /reload weechat. When you're happy, /save. Some areas to look for in weechat.conf, first and foremost, at least for me ... Finding cool pre-made themes is easy with your favorite search engine. Plenty out there and available for use or inspiration.

Lastly, for both clients, there are plenty of scripts available for adding functionality, for instance, notifications. Irssi has a scripts section in their website. You can also bring in a bunch with which iirc, install to /usr/share/irssi/. You can copy over the ones you want, or all, or symlink them to ~/.irssi/scripts. Installing scripts manually, as needed, you would install to ~/.irssi/scripts/ and if you want to load any automatically, you can symlink them to ~/.irssi/autoload/ weechat does it a bit different, as they have scripts in various languages; ruby, perl, lua, python, and subsequently have corresponding directories w/in ~/.weechat/. Each specific directory has an autoload sub-directory, of which you could do the same as described in the irssi section.

Anyway, so I'll leave it there.
Enjoy!
Edit: IRC client in scrot is weechat.
Edit2: IRC client discrimination was not intentional.

Good stuff.

HexChat themes here:

http://hexchat.github.io/themes.html

Simply extract them to your config folder, e.g This will overwrite your existing theme. Restart HexChat to apply the changes.

Just dropping in a few IRC clients we have in the repos, apart from hexchat, irssi and weechat:

epic4/5 *
ircii
sic
tinyirc *
lostirc
scrollz
bitlbee *%
smuxi *
loqui
f-irc *
ekg2 *%
centerim *%
barnowl %
ayttm %
kvirc
konversation
quassel
xchat *
finch *%
pidgin et al. *%
some emacs IRC clients

Now that's what we can call choice. Those marked with * I tried already without digging into the config. Hope we can fill up that gap :) BTW, some of them are multi-protocol (%) so they could be interesting for those who have jabber/xmpp, MSN or so.

Really is quite amazing how many are available. That's why I edited my OP to mention I did not intend to discriminate.

Hmm... it looks like I will have an irc-filled weekend! Perhaps I will break down and open a Jabber account.

Ok, so I'm one of that "numerous emacs clients (erc)" group, but with the fact that you can use python to script for irssi, I'm really tempted to give it a fair chance.

Cool stuff Drew.

WeeChat here:

Relevant lines from config:

thanks Kexolino
If you'd like notifications - dkeg has also posted this gem, with a pointer how to use weechat notifications with dunst:
http://linuxbbq.org/bbs/viewtopic.php?f ... 21&p=18562

Looking good kex, thanks for sharing.

@wux, I actually just changes up my dunstrc the other night. I'll post it up later tonight.

^ cool, i could do with a new one, left it with the default one.

irssi notifications the easy way:

http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/Irssi_ ... nt_Signals

^ Does this work with other window managers?

Looks to be the same as MB and i discussed elsewhere. Works for MB but for me i have not had luck. I seem to have some issue with perl, or at least according to irssi.

Didn't know this was mentioned elsewhere (though this isn't a perl extension, I think?); for me it works in i3, at least for "alad:", not "alad" in the middle of a sentence.

drew, for me the notify.pl works in dunst, but nothing else :) had a session with titan in a private convo, it notified me after every message from him, and it worked for him, too. If you want to test, let me know

cool thanks, but no worries for now, I'm happy with weechat at the moment, especially now that its not so fugly.

changed the notify.rb to use bar instead of dunst. This was in conjunction with changing my battery notification script.

wow, so seems weechat took a huge leap. Took a quick read through some of the new items, nothing seemingly overly special.

looking for help to get notify.pl working with irssi
I have perl, libnotify-bin, notify.pl. you know all the easy stuff. Just troubleshooting what I may be missing, for example, do I need libconfig-auto-perl? When I start irssi, says it loads perl, but if I /load perl, the autocomplete does not show perl, I just type it, and it says its already loaded.
no emergency, no rush, weechat notifications work, just curious. I'd like to just get it sorted, you know?

thanks,

Did you pull in irssi-scripts and libwww-perl?

(edit: I mentioned irssi-scripts because it does have the notify.pl inside, IIRC)