ERC (software)
Encyclopedia
ERC is a software package written in Emacs Lisp
that enables the Emacs
editor to act as an Internet Relay Chat
(IRC) client.
It is an official GNU
project, and is part of GNU Emacs.
ing, automatic channel joining, flood control, and auto-completion of nicks and commands.
ERC can highlight
nicks and text for conversation tracking,
highlight and optionally remove control character
s, and allows URLs, nicknames and text to be converted to buttons.
It provides input history, and separate buffers per server and channel.
Notifications include channel activity on the EMacs mode-line, user online status, and channel tracking of hidden conversations. ERC is multi-lingual, and provides auto-script loading at startup.
ERC has a modular design, with many features implemented in "more than two dozen loadable modules" included in the default setup, such as autoaway, fill (splits long lines), log (saves chat buffers), spelling, bbdb, which connects ERC to Emacs' BBDB for contact management, and replace, which auto-replaces given text in messages. ERC supports SSL/TLS
for encrypted IRC communication.
Berezin wrote that ERC was "originally written by Alexander L. Belikoff, then I improved it in many ways and promoted to version 2.0". The pair stopped development in 1999. Mario Lang wrote that as of 2001 ERC had been "apparently abandoned", so he and Alexander Schroeder adopted it and created the ERC SourceForge
project. Berezin responded positively to news of the renewed effort and bestowed stewardship to the new developers; in the ensuing years, versions 2.1, 3, 4, 5, and 5.1 were released. ERC development moved from SourceForge to GNU
in May 2006,
and ERC was officially incorporated into Emacs release 22.1 on June 3, 2007.
is the other. Circe and the "ascetic" ZenIRC are also Emacs-based. According to its author, Circe incorporates ideas from ERC such as its activity tracker and others; it was developed as ERC became "difficult to debug and improve."
Emacs Lisp
Emacs Lisp is a dialect of the Lisp programming language used by the GNU Emacs and XEmacs text editors . It is used for implementing most of the editing functionality built into Emacs, the remainder being written in C...
that enables the Emacs
Emacs
Emacs is a class of text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. GNU Emacs has over 1,000 commands. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work.Development began in the mid-1970s and continues actively...
editor to act as an Internet Relay Chat
Internet Relay Chat
Internet Relay Chat is a protocol for real-time Internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfer, including file...
(IRC) client.
It is an official GNU
GNU
GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...
project, and is part of GNU Emacs.
Features
ERC includes message timestampTimestamp
A timestamp is a sequence of characters, denoting the date or time at which a certain event occurred. A timestamp is the time at which an event is recorded by a computer, not the time of the event itself...
ing, automatic channel joining, flood control, and auto-completion of nicks and commands.
ERC can highlight
Syntax highlighting
Syntax highlighting is a feature of some text editors that display text—especially source code—in different colors and fonts according to the category of terms. This feature eases writing in a structured language such as a programming language or a markup language as both structures and...
nicks and text for conversation tracking,
highlight and optionally remove control character
Control character
In computing and telecommunication, a control character or non-printing character is a code point in a character set, that does not in itself represent a written symbol.It is in-band signaling in the context of character encoding....
s, and allows URLs, nicknames and text to be converted to buttons.
It provides input history, and separate buffers per server and channel.
Notifications include channel activity on the EMacs mode-line, user online status, and channel tracking of hidden conversations. ERC is multi-lingual, and provides auto-script loading at startup.
ERC has a modular design, with many features implemented in "more than two dozen loadable modules" included in the default setup, such as autoaway, fill (splits long lines), log (saves chat buffers), spelling, bbdb, which connects ERC to Emacs' BBDB for contact management, and replace, which auto-replaces given text in messages. ERC supports SSL/TLS
Transport Layer Security
Transport Layer Security and its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer , are cryptographic protocols that provide communication security over the Internet...
for encrypted IRC communication.
History
According to the GNU project, ERC was first developed by Alexander L. Belikoff and Sergey Berezin.Berezin wrote that ERC was "originally written by Alexander L. Belikoff, then I improved it in many ways and promoted to version 2.0". The pair stopped development in 1999. Mario Lang wrote that as of 2001 ERC had been "apparently abandoned", so he and Alexander Schroeder adopted it and created the ERC SourceForge
SourceForge
SourceForge Enterprise Edition is a collaborative revision control and software development management system. It provides a front-end to a range of software development lifecycle services and integrates with a number of free software / open source software applications .While originally itself...
project. Berezin responded positively to news of the renewed effort and bestowed stewardship to the new developers; in the ensuing years, versions 2.1, 3, 4, 5, and 5.1 were released. ERC development moved from SourceForge to GNU
GNU
GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...
in May 2006,
and ERC was officially incorporated into Emacs release 22.1 on June 3, 2007.
Related work
ERC is one of two IRC clients included in the Emacs distribution; rcircRcirc
rcirc is an Internet Relay Chat client written in Emacs Lisp. It is one of two IRC clients included in GNU Emacs since release 22.1, alongside ERC....
is the other. Circe and the "ascetic" ZenIRC are also Emacs-based. According to its author, Circe incorporates ideas from ERC such as its activity tracker and others; it was developed as ERC became "difficult to debug and improve."
External links
- ERC at EmacsWiki