Sclack: The best CLI client for Slack, because everything is terrible | Hacker News Reader

Sclack: The best CLI client for Slack, because everything is terrible

github.com

142 pointspavel_lishin34 comments

Extra points for the "Made with [rage emoji]". Can't stand the cheap sentimentality of "Made with [heart emoji]" (Then again, maybe people who use that line mean it...).

I agree.

The rage emoji reminds me of the expression “to use with anger”, which has come into vogue on HN in the past year or so.

vt. to use for a real task, as opposed to just testing it out.

“Has anyone used this in anger?”

http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/use-i...

Past year? :) That was a phrase I associate with comp.lang.lisp, from 15-20 years ago. I’ve used it since.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17713350

I suspect it's a Perl thing (use Perl with anger).

Here is a 1998 Usenet posting in alt.sysadmin.recovery that uses it:

https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.sysadmin...

The message ID is: slrn756lf3.9lm.nik@catkin.nothing-going-on.org

Ah, slrn; what I'm using today. :)

However, Philip Wadler (famed FP computer scientist) used this phrase in a February 1998 article called "Functional Programming: An angry half-dozen":

http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/course/2003/pllab/print-files/wadle...

The paper says that a postdoc colleague, a dozen years earlier (thus 1986) asked Wadler about his new bicycle: "have you used it in anger yet?"

Wadler may have introduced this as a meme pertaining to programming languages or constructs. In any case, if he did actually glean it from someone else's internet posting about a programming language being used in anger, he's sure not admitting it in this paper.

> I suspect ["used in anger"] is a Perl thing

It predates usage in the context of Perl, or any other software. Indeed it probably predates the existence of software :-)

I think it originates in a British military context (i.e. shots fired in anger rather than in training).

Edit: These answers [1] include a citation from 1798. Sorry if you actually just meant first use in a software context.

[1] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/30939/is-used-in...

Minor correction: the phrase in vogue now is "use in anger", as in your example, not "use with anger" as you state first.

Yeah, typo. Too late for me to fix. I get it right the second time around. :)

It seems to be a TUI (textual user interface), not a CLI (command line interface). If you want a Slack TUI client, there was already https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack (And I think that one can display images, so maybe it's really halfway between TUI and GUI.)

How does this compare to wee-slack (slack gateway/plugging for the wee-slack irc client)?

https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack

Looks like the main features are arguably better defaults, libcaca support (basically useless anyways), and profile support (how often do you really need to check someone's info that you don't already have stored in the app).

didn't they deprecate the gateway last year?

Wee-slack is a gateway for weechat; it uses the slack api. But weechat can function as its own proxy (client/server split between the gui/tui and the network bits).

So not irc gateway, weechat gateway.

Wonder how this compares to [slack-term](https://github.com/erroneousboat/slack-term/)...

Well it's maintained, to start with. The slack-term author has the disconcerting habit of rejecting issues because he doesn't like terminals.

Wow, you're not wrong. I just went through the closed PR list. Terrible maintainer. Even closes PR's for typos in the README. Doesn't even give a reason why he closes.

It's his project, and I'm not the one who is going to judge his maintainership, but I am glad that there is choice in this class of application.

I think that stonogo might be wrong. I've just been through that same list, and I haven't found anything rejected for not liking terminals, let alone a "habit" of that. Whereas I have found several PRs closed because they were incorporated into the software (e.g. #40).

I like the idea of this, but it crashes for me on startup. I would definitely use a Slack client like this, but installation with `pip install` would be much better than having to install from source.

Wonderful! I hate slack GUI: kills battery and too slow.

I am eager to try that!

I would love some irc bridge functionality hyperlinking the images, but it may be too much to ask.

What's this poking fun at: "because everything is terrible"?

The syrupy messages you see on Slack when it starts up.

arent those set by your admin/team?

There are defaults that most people probably don't change.

I wish there was one of these that actually reversed the protocol so you can use username/password. Unless I'm mistaken, token is an opt-in/out feature for each slack admin.

How hard would it to be to get images to be shown in the CLI? Or is that not possible with whatever stock terminal software?

iTerm can display images, but I don't think there's a universal way to do it. https://www.iterm2.com/documentation-images.html

Pretty much impossible. There are some programs that can kind of do some images, but certainly not gifs

imgcat can do gif in iTerm

Yes, but only iterm

xterm supports graphics https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2114347/raster-graphics-...

Terminal graphics protocol: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/graphics-protocol.html

This is awesome. Will most likely be contributing to this

Looks awesome, I can't wait to check it out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com