F-IRC(1)

📦 version 1.36, in ubuntu jammy

🌸 F-IRC(1) 🌸 — the general commands manual, bestie edition

okay so. <rainbow>f-irc</rainbow> is a user friendly irc client for a terminal / command-line / console, and this is its manual page. buckle up, we're going in 💖

✨ NAME ✨

f-irc — a user friendly irc client for a terminal/command-line/console 💅

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

f-irc [configurationfile.conf]

options: configurationfile.conf

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

The program f-irc Is an irc client for a terminal/command-line/console. (yes the capital I is canon, we don't make the rules 💀)

Its goal is to be as user friendly as possible, with easy navigation and keyboard shortcuts for quick navigation. The learning curve should be as shallow as possible. lowkey the whole vibe is "you'll be comfy here immediately" ✨

🌈 CONFIGURATION 🌈

Create ~/.firc or firc.conf. ~/.firc will be automatically found at start, else enter it on the command-line:

f-irc my-ficonfig.conf

(also note: in the original that command wraps weirdly across lines as f-irc my-fi- config.conf — it's just one command, bestie, don't @ me 😭)

k so here's every single config param, no skipping, we're thorough in this house:

  • server=host:port — An IRC server to connect to. 🌐
  • auto_join=... — Channel to automatically join. 👋
  • send_after_login=... — Command to send to the IRC server after connection setup. E.g. PRIVMSG #NickServ IDENTIFY my_password 🔐
  • username=... password=... — Used for authentication against IRC server.
  • nick=... name=... — Identification settings. who even are you 👑
  • description=... — Will be shown instead of server name (if used).
  • part_message=... — Message to send to the channel when leaving a channel. 👋💔
  • server_exit_message=... — Message to send to all channels when leaving a server.
  • allow_invite=true/false — Should f-irc automatically open a channel when it receives an INVITE message? 💌
  • ignore_mouse=true/false — Wether to ignore mouse clicks(!). Default is true which makes f-irc ignore the mouse. 🖱️🚫 (yes, the "(!)" is in the original, the author was also shocked)
  • favorite=... ... — This defines a favorite channel. First parameter is the server hostname or description, the second parameter the channel name (e.g. #linux.nl). Jump through your favorite channels using ^Q. ⭐
  • store_config_on_exit=true/false — Wether to update the configuration-file at exit. Useful when adding channels and/or servers or changing nicks. 💾
  • notice_in_serverchannel=true/false — Most (all?) "NOTICE" messages are not personal messages but are from e.g. chanserv and nickserv and friends. If this parameter is set to true, no new channel-windows are created for them; they are put in the server-channel window instead. 📬
  • highlight=on/off — Wether lines with your nick name in them should be highlighted (green on black). 💚
  • meta-colors=true/false — Show server-messages and personal messages in a different color than generic messages.
  • all-colors=true/false — Global color-switch. 🌈
  • nick-color=true/false — When enabled, each line spoken will be colored with the color depending on who said it. 🎨
  • use_nonbasic_colors=true/false — Use more than the 16 standard colors. Useful for "nick-color".
  • inverse_window_heading=true/false — Show window-heading in reverse (true) or with ASCII-art (false).
  • show_parts=true/false — Should f-irc show a message when someone leaves a channel? 👋
  • show_mode_changes=true/false — Should f-irc show a message when there's a mode change?
  • show_nick_change=true/false — Should f-irc show a message when someone changes his/hers nick? 🔄
  • show_joins=true/false — Should f-irc show a message when someone joins a channel? 🚪
  • auto_rejoin=true/false — Allows you to automatically re-join a channel when you're kicked. (iconic behaviour honestly) 🔁
  • remember_channels=true/false — Store any channels you were in when f-irc terminates. 🧠
  • grep_filter=server,channel,file,reg-exp — If a line written in a server/channel with the specified regular expression, write that line to "file". server and or channel can be omitted but the comma needs to stay. For the server, f-irc looks at the "description"-field of a server. 🔍
  • ignore_file=... — Points to a file with nicks to ignore: #channel nick etc. 🙈
  • auto_private_channel=on/off — Automatically create a new channel window when using /MSG
  • dcc_path=... — Path where to store files received via DCC. 📁
  • max_channel_record_lines=... — How many lines of text to store in the scroll-back buffer.
  • partial_highlight_match=yes/no — Draw the whole line in green or only the parts that match the search term. 🟩
  • word_cloud_n=... — How many items to put in the word-cloud window. Set to 0 to completely disable the word-cloud. ☁️
  • word_cloud_win_height=... — Height of the word-cloud window. This excludes the 2 rows for the border.
  • word_cloud_refresh=... — Interval in which to restart the word-cloud. Value is in seconds. ⏱️
  • word_cloud_min_word_size=... — Minimum size (in characters) of the words evaluated. A sensible value is 4.
  • default_colorpair=...,... — Set the default color pair. Used for generic texts and borders. First is foreground, second is background. Note that you can either use a color name ("red", "green", etc.) or a hexadecimal color triplet with values 000...3e7 (that may sound strange but ncurses use the range 0...999) with a '#' in front of it. E.g. #1230fe2fa,white 🎨
  • highlight_colorpair=...,... — Color pair used when your nick is mentioned. 💖
  • meta_colorpair=...,... — Color pair used when server messages are shown (joins, parts, etc)
  • error_colorpair=...,... — Colors to use when there's an error to show 🚨
  • jumpy_navigation=true/false — ^W/R/Z/X: jumpy navigation 🦘
  • temp_colorpair=...,... — Temporary color;
  • dictionary_file=... — Dictionary file to use for tab completion, see below. 📖
  • log_dir= — Path where to store chats logging.
  • mark_personal_messages=yes/no — If someone send you a message in a personal channel ("query"), should f-irc then highlight that channel as if a personal message was sent (default is no). ✉️

💅 COLORS 💅

Available colors: black, blue, cyan, default, green, magenta, red, white, yellow. that's the whole palette, periodt 🎨

🧚 DICTIONARY 🧚

F-irc can, apart from channel/nick/command also do tab-completion on a configurable list of words. With "dictionary_file=..." you can select a text-file with 2 or more columns. In the first column you put the word that f-irc needs to look for when pressing tab. Then when there's a match, that word will be replaced by what's in the 2nd (and 3d, etc.) column. ✨

👑 USAGE 👑

When F-IRC is started, you'll see a list of channels and servers on the right. On the left a large box with what is written by people. The line at the top is the topic of that channel and the line at the bottom is where you write the things you would like to appear in the channels. 📝

If there's a reverse color border around the channel-list, then it is selected. That means that you can navigate through it with the cursor keys. Press right to enter a channel. Press right again on that channel to get a list of names in that channel. Press right once again to get a list of actions to perform on that user. Press left to exit the actions menu. Another left to return to the channel-list. Use up cursor/down cursor keys to navigate through the list. 'home' jumps to the top of the list, 'end' to the bottom. 🧭

Press left on a server to "fold it": this hides the channels. Press the right cursor key to unfold it. When a server is not folded and it is already selected, press "right" again to get a menu with server-options: reconnect a server for example and disconnect it. 📡

In the "scroll back"/"search" windows you can press '/' to search in that window and 'w' to write the contents of a window to a file. 🔎

^X means: press ctrl key and press x while still holding ctrl. (iykyk but like, just in case 🫶)

If the channel/name-list is selected, you can enter ^N: you can then move the cursor from right to left and back to navigate through the sentence you're typing. If the edit-line is selected, then the border around the names/channels is no longer reverse, also the '>' left from- and the '>' right from the edit line are in reverse video. ✍️

If the edit-line is selected, you can press up cursor key and down left cursor key to browse through older lines you wrote. Also "home" and "end" work like they should. ⬆️⬇️

^A moves the cursor to the left, ^E moves the cursor to the right ^D deletes the character under the cursor. This is like how the bash-shell behaves. 🐚

^U Clear input line. Press second time to undo clear. ↩️

If there's something new in a channel, a '*' is put in front of the server or channel name. ⭐

^Q jump to your next favorite channel (see the "favorite=... ..." configuration file parameter). 💖

^W lets you jump to the next channel in which new lines were written.

^R like ^W but searching backwards

^Z lets you jump to the next channel in which your (nick-)name was mentioned 📣

^X like ^Z but searching backwards

^T jump back to the previously selected channel

^O lets f-irc remove all the *'s 🧹

^F lets you scroll-back in what was written by others

^B lets you scroll-back in what you wrote. you can then select a line and press enter to copy it to your edit-line 📋

^Y Enable/disable "only show channels with new messages". 👀

^V Enter 1 character. Used when entering ascii values < 32, e.g. ^B for bold.

Press TAB for auto-completion of commands (e.g. /TOPIC, /TIME, etc.) and nick names ⌨️

Press ^G to close a channel.

Press ^L to redraw the screen. 🔄

Press ^C to terminate the program. Or enter /EXIT (or /exit, commands are not case sensitive). 🚪

When you enter:

  • @/... then /... is send
  • @@... then @... is send
  • @... then the program will look for a channel/server with '...' in its name and then change the channel to that one. you can enter ^J to let it jump to the next channel with that ✨

^P add a markerline to the current channel 📌

F2 Store current configuration on disk 💾

F3 Add a new server ➕

F4 Switch to edit-line (shortcut for ^N)

F5 Redraw screen 🖥️

F6 Search in all windows 🔍

F7 Close all channels with only "NOTICE" messages. Those are most oftehn the channels with messages that come from bots and servers. 🤖

F8 Configure f-irc ⚙️

F9 Undo the close of the last closed channel ↩️

F10 ^N Toggle between channel-list, edit-line and word-cloud (if enabled)

F12 Add markerline to all channels on all servers 📌📌

Okay so bestie, the bottom line isn't just for messages — you can type commands in there too. Remember @... from earlier? And TAB-completion? Yeah those. On top of all that, a whole lil squad of slash-commands got implemented, and here they are, no cap:

  • /ADDSERVER — adds a server. That's it, that's the whole job 💅
  • /AWAY — sets your away status. brb era activated 🦋
  • /BAN — bans a user from the current channel. they gotta go ✨
  • /CTCP — sends a CTCP command. Like for example: /CTCP flok VERSION 👑
  • /DCCSEND — sends a file to a user using DCC. file transfer moment 📁
  • /EXIT — terminates the program. closing the app, going outside, terrifying 🌸
  • /IGNORE — ignores a user. not seeing it, not engaging 🙈
  • /INFO — asks for info from an IRC server. lowkey nosy, we love that 💜
  • /INVITE — invites a user to a channel. come thru 🎀
  • /JOIN — enters a channel. pulling up 💖
  • /KICK — kicks a user from a channel 🦵
  • /LEAVE — leaves a channel. short-cut is ^G 🧚
  • /LINKS — lists the servers that this irc server is connected to. the whole friend group map 🌈
  • /LIST — asks the server for a list of channels 📋
  • /MODE — sets a mode on a user ⚙️
  • /MSG — sends a private message to a user. dm energy 💌
  • /NICK — sets your nick for that server. rebrand era ✨
  • /NOTICE — sends a notice to a user 📢
  • /PING — pings a user 🏓
  • /SAVECONFIG — stores the current configuration on disk. save your progress, bestie 💾
  • /SEARCHALL — searches for a text in all channels and servers. full detective mode 🔍
  • /SPAM — sends a private message to everybody in a channel. People don't like it and you will probably be banned. like, genuinely, do not 😭
  • /TIME — asks an IRC server for its notion of time. what time is it in server o'clock ⏰
  • /TOPIC — sets the topic of a channel 📌
  • /UNIGNORE — un-ignores a user. forgiveness arc 💖
  • /VERSION — asks for the parameters of a server 🏷️
  • /WHOIS x — asks the server who x is. identity check, main character reveal 👀

🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

http://www.vanheusden.com/fi/ — go look, bestie, the lore is there 🫶

🎀 MISC 🎀

F-IRC was written by folkert@vanheusden.com 💜

Please be nice to other people. Fr fr. That's the whole vibe. Be kind, it costs nothing, and it's literally the most iconic thing you can do 💖✨

and that's the page, bestie!! this was f-irc, version 2014-11, from F-IRC(1) — thanks for reading the whole thing, you ate that fr fr 👑🎀💅

📦 where this page comes from