Emacs and interactive messaging tools

Besides support of non-interactive messaging tools, such as E-Mail and Usenet news, Emacs also has support for almost all interactive messaging tools:

Instant Messaging protocols. This includes support for ICQ, Yahoo! Chat, AIM (AOL Instant Messaging), Jabber and MSN protocols;
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) protocol.

For each protocol, usially exists few implementations, that differs in degree of support and functionality. Some of these implementations, already not supported, so I'll describe only supported implementations, if their exists.

IRC is very popular among Unix users, that often use Emacs, and this lead to creation of several packages, implementing support for this protocol. Now most powerful and actively developed package is Erc, but there are also several alternative implementation — Zenirc & Rcirc. Zenirc has many features, but almost not supported now (you can download it from ftp://ftp.splode.com/pub/zenirc if you want). And Rcirc package implements simple IRC client and included into GNU Emacs 22.

In this article I'll describe packages that provide support for:

Instant messaging protocols

IRC protocol

Last change: 05.03.2013 16:54

Emacs and interactive messaging tools

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