Wallops: A modern IRC client for classic Mac OS | Hacker News Reader

Wallops: A modern IRC client for classic Mac OS

jcs.org

94 pointstodsacerdoti27 comments

Seeing new software being released for the classic Mac is freakin' awesome, please keep up the great work. I just wish Macintosh (either 68k or PowerPC) emulators improved a bit more, I no longer have a functioning machine and they're not getting any cheaper.

MAME's Mac emulation has improved a lot recently. Give it a try.

For 68k, MinivMac seems pretty darn great?

Leave that page open in a tab without moving your mouse over the window for a couple minutes for a cute little treat.

It would be cool if this could be plugged into Infinite Mac: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41499239

If they could be given network access, and permitted to install software, would be so awesome!!! :)

This is brilliant. I’ve been tempted to get my Macintosh SE online just for fun and this would be a great use for it. Permanent little IRC terminal.

I’m serious considering it too…

I oughta show my wife this. She used ircle back in the day.

I just love new software for old machines (especially multi-tasking systems).

I wonder how JCS didn't write a Gopher client. I know there are several, but he might add some nice features such as converting most Unicode chars to Mac-Roman or whatever did Mac OS use in the 90's.

I love that they also wrote a VCS for classic Mac OS, a GitHub equivalent for it and also self-host on that too.

So now the classic Mac has a nicer IRC client than the latest macOS.

How long does it take to verify the SHA256 sum on an System 6 Mac?

Even the icon is well thought out.

The example image is weird though. Where do you type?? I see no input field.

(I'm not a mac guy, am I just missing it?)

Maybe the white bar below the tabs?

Huh. For some reason I thought that was a bottom window decoration, I think the button on the far right of it confused me, but that must be it.

As a long-time Mac user, that bit of the screenshot confused me as well. It looks exactly like a disabled horizontal scroll bar would.

I think you're right.

An unnecessary [Send] button on the end might clarify its purpose. :-)

Writing software for old systems can sometimes be frustrating, but mostly it is SO nice. The target was usually quite simple and you don't have to deal with all the extra obstacles and choices that are obligatory today when running software on a bazillion different systems.

Not even having the option to deal with unicode can be such a breath of fresh air.

I recall era before UTF8 wide adoptiont to be a mess of many other encodings, multiple even in the same language... Not a refreshing memory for me.

Even today, Japanese text online and elsewhere uses a variety of encodings. It's sometimes a frustrating experience. Compared to other languages, it is common to see non-Unicode encodings. In particular, Shift JIS (actually, the Windows-specific variant called Windows-932, which is incompatible with JIS X 0213:2004, called "Shift JIS 2004". Old enough Unix and Linux servers used EUC-JP, and Mac OS has its own encoding).

Well, for something like an IRC client it is up for the user to set the correct one.

:) what is the correct one? It's different for each server, or even channel. IRC clients usually supported such custom settings. But then there was the matter of the other end of your screen - your terminal and maybe screen session I which it run.

I used to have an IRC config that was different for each server and sometimes channel, then displayed that in one shared encoding with other chat apos, then converted that on the fly with screen to match encoding of other apps.

Now I just had to make sure to convert encodings and line endings of all config files, any text file, or even source code and scripts...

Nowadays you just paste emojis in code and it's there, it works anyone, including the user. Huge change.

The correct one is the one that doesn't get you yelled at and possibly banned by the rest of the channel.

Yes. Today's messaging services require no skills whatsoever. Getting yelled at the first time you log in establishes pecking order and ensures people weigh their words.

Discord doesn't have these kind of safeguards.

Tried reading the source code on their website and every line of source has a scrollbar under it, making it very difficult to read. Not sure what caused this, zooming out doesn't help.

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