Ugh, they added "Typing notification".
Thankfully it's only a protocol, we can ignore this if we want.
It was the nicest form of instant conversation I've ever had. Watching the blurred text become a message was lovely and every conversation felt snapper rather than anxiety-inducing as you start at the "x is typing" message, instead you just watch the sentance grow, then materialise.
Lots of my early stuff (late 90s and early 00s) has basically vanished from the 'net as well; I know the feeling.
"Bob and Phil are typing..."
"Bob, Phil and 3 others are typing..."
Phil: I'm just walking down a fine wee snicket.
Bob: What's the frequency Kenneth?
Phil: ■■■■■■■
Bob: ■■■
3 others typing...
Though I suppose you could visualize it in the nickname somehow. But I hate the current retrieve trend of "and 3 others". It didn't really tell you anything if one of the other participants is someone you want to know about. Because you still don't know if any of them is typing or not.
If it's important, show it for everyone. Otherwise don't bother showing it at all. But showing it for some randomly picked users makes no sense.
Then again, in practice I found that if more than two or three people are typing at a given moment, it's probably a conversation that's lively enough already, and I'd usually just wait to see what the participants end up writing regardless of who it is. So the value of such a notification is about the same as if the all the typing users were named in it explicitly. :)
Sometimes just the writing is cathartic enough that once you've gotten it off your chest, you don't really need to hit submit.
I also had a limit over 52 chars with elipses to stop walls of text.
I wonder how many other people do this.
Except for the noobs that plonk down a question and leave a minute later.
Quassel is really nice, it's got infinite scrollback, multi-network, GUI configuration that is stored on the server, logs go into a database, and the desktop and mobile clients (QuasselDroid!) are really good. It brings IRC into this century without giving up what makes it so good. Unlike Matrix which is aiming more at the Whatsapp/Telegram/Discord community.
I use both mind you, but I don't integrate IRC into Matrix for this reason. I use Matrix just for the individual and small group chats and Quassel for IRC. Matrix gets too messy when you're on tens of different group chats.
thunderous storm of typing notifications blacks out the screen
I get these now through quassel but it'd be nice to have them in the protocol.
I have a feeling IRCv3 will never be finished though. The activity level is just too low.