Text chat at work
Jan. 30th, 2016 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtbcAt work we usually chat internally via XMPP when by text; videochat is by Zoom.us. Some of the Mac users have had trouble with their client, Adium, and it is apparently not much maintained, so we have been trying out Slack. As with Zoom.us, it appears to be a proprietary client and protocol. I rather prefer being able to rely on open protocols* and have my choice of open-source clients† and, while Slack's client offers all manner of pinning and emoji and other stuff that for some is a delight, personally I was relieved to find that Slack offer what appears to be quite usable IRC and XMPP gateways. I have limited screen real-estate and want to watch chat in various kinds of channel so being able to use Slack and other things without needing multiple clients is welcome.
This has caused me to rediscover irssi. I reasoned that the IRC people have learned plenty about how to write a client that allows efficient management of servers and channels, and sure enough it's largely been a delight to use. I'm generally more a fan of text-based tools anyway rather than clicky GUIs. The configuration file is thought through well and I now have it attaching to Google (I have an account for work, we use Google Drive, etc.), freenode (I am mtbc on our #ome IRC channel), our Computional Biology division's XMPP, and Slack's XMPP gateway. Really, the only wrinkle so far is the lack of convenient XMPP support for Cygwin's packaging of irssi, but I try to avoid Microsoft Windows anyway: I've installed Debian on my work laptop (under which the Zoom.us client has now progressed from segfaulting to doing nothing).
*SIP/H.323 over NAT can be a pain, maybe IPv6 will help there, but WebRTC seems to already work well anyway.
†I am irritated that I can't already do online banking in this manner. Too many services come bundled with the need to use their chosen web UI. And, worse, many web UIs seem now to want to imitate smartphone apps.
Update: We have moved on to non-Slack alternatives, and I suspect that we may try out Gitter, but I remain glad that Slack's client prompted me to switch everything to irssi.
This has caused me to rediscover irssi. I reasoned that the IRC people have learned plenty about how to write a client that allows efficient management of servers and channels, and sure enough it's largely been a delight to use. I'm generally more a fan of text-based tools anyway rather than clicky GUIs. The configuration file is thought through well and I now have it attaching to Google (I have an account for work, we use Google Drive, etc.), freenode (I am mtbc on our #ome IRC channel), our Computional Biology division's XMPP, and Slack's XMPP gateway. Really, the only wrinkle so far is the lack of convenient XMPP support for Cygwin's packaging of irssi, but I try to avoid Microsoft Windows anyway: I've installed Debian on my work laptop (under which the Zoom.us client has now progressed from segfaulting to doing nothing).
*SIP/H.323 over NAT can be a pain, maybe IPv6 will help there, but WebRTC seems to already work well anyway.
†I am irritated that I can't already do online banking in this manner. Too many services come bundled with the need to use their chosen web UI. And, worse, many web UIs seem now to want to imitate smartphone apps.
Update: We have moved on to non-Slack alternatives, and I suspect that we may try out Gitter, but I remain glad that Slack's client prompted me to switch everything to irssi.
