The Grumpy Editor's Guide to graphical IRC clients

The Grumpy Editor's Guide to graphical IRC clients

Gaim windows use smooth scrolling, a feature your editor got tired of back in the VT100 days; unfortunately, there appears to be no easy way to turn it off.

Tools->Preferences->Conversations->[ ] Use smooth-scrolling. Yeah, GAIM's preferences really need to be reorganised to make more sense, but it's there.

Private messages result in the quiet creation of a new tab - something which can be easy for the user to miss. In general, the handling of private messages in IRC clients seems a little awkward.

Tools->Preferences->Interface has lots of options for handling tabs; for example, even if you have tabs enabled, you can have select where to place new conversations (including "New window").

Gaim also doesn't take the hint when all of its windows are closed; one must explicitly tell it to go away by selecting "Quit" from the "Buddies" menu in the "Buddy list" window - something your editor found less than entirely intuitive.

That's a feature, actually. GAIM is primarily an IM client that also handles IRC, not the other way around. Would you really want your IM client to exit whenever you stop talking to the last person? Seriously, that makes about as much sense as your MUA quitting as soon as you have no unread mail in your inbox anymore.

(On a side note, though, thinking about it, I'm not even sure why this kind of behaviour would be desirable in an IRC client. I at least would be very annoyed if it exited automatically as soon as I left all channels.)