erc: Special Features
2.2 Special Features
====================
ERC has some features that distinguish it from some IRC clients.
• multiple channels and multiple servers
Every channel is put in a separate buffer. Several IRC servers may
be connected to at the same time.
• private message separation
Private conversations are treated as channels, and are put into
separate buffers in Emacs. We call these “query buffers”.
• highlighting
Some occurrences of words can be highlighted, which makes it easier
to track different kinds of conversations.
• notification
ERC can notify you that certain users are online.
• channel tracking
Channels can be hidden and conversation continue in the background.
You are notified when something is said in such a channel that is
not currently visible. This makes it easy to get Real Work done
while still maintaining an IRC presence.
• nick completion
ERC can complete words upon hitting ‘TAB’, which eases the writing
of nicknames in messages.
• history
Past actions are kept in history rings for future use. To navigate
a history ring, hit ‘M-p’ to go backwards and ‘M-n’ to go forwards.
• multiple languages
Different channels and servers may have different language
encodings.
multiple languages. Please contact the Emacs developers if you are
interested in helping with the translation effort.
• user scripting
Users can load scripts (e.g., auto greeting scripts) when ERC
starts up.
It is also possible to make custom IRC commands, if you know a
little Emacs Lisp. Just make an Emacs Lisp function and call it
‘erc-cmd-NEWCOMMAND’, where ‘NEWCOMMAND’ is the name of the new
command in capital letters.
• auto reconnect
If the connection goes away at some point, ERC will try to
reconnect automatically. If it fails to reconnect, and you want to
try to manually reestablish the connection at some later point,
switch to an ERC buffer and run the ‘/RECONNECT’ command.
Info Catalog
erc: Sample Session
erc: Getting Started