ii is a better IRC client created by the great folk at suckless. ii is an IRC client that works completely via the filesystem and FIFOs to provide files and folders representing the servers, channels, and chats you are in on IRC. Sound interesting? To me it sure did -- but I found rather sparse documentation on using ii. Thus, the creation of this post. ii doesn't need much explanation as its usage is basic and it is just 500 lines of C, but it can seem intimidating and impractical for personal use at first glance. However, its a joy once you have ii working and realize its simplicity. This guide should get you headed in that path.

So how does one use the ii in practicality? The first step is to grab yourself a copy of ii from suckless, extract the .tar.gz, and do a standard make/install (I'll assume you can do that much on your own).

Once you've done that, run ii for the first time with:

ii -s irc.freenode.net -n yournick</pre>

The folder ~/irc will be created containing all of your IRC data as such:

irc/irc.freenode.net
|-- chanserv
|   `-- out
|-- nickserv
|   |-- in
|   `-- out
|-- out
`-- in

While ii is running that means you are connected to the server. If you look in ~/irc you should see a folder named irc.freenode.net and within that folder, two folders: chanserv and nickserv. Keep an eye on ~/irc through usage as all ii does is work with the data in that folder.

If you have a registered nickname you'd like to identify with, simply go into the nickserv folder, echo to the in FIFO, and verify the results with tail like so:

cd ~/irc/irc.freenode.net/nickserv
echo "identify mysupersecretpassword" > in
tail -n 2 out

Assuming you entered the correct password, the nickserv should have identified you. Now your free to enter any channels you might like. The method for joining channels is just like how you talked to the nickserv. Here is an example of joining #testchannel within irc.freenode.net:

cd ~/irc/irc.freenode.net/
echo "/j #testchannel" > in

Now in the irc.freenode.net folder you should see a folder named #testchannel. Within that folder again, there are in and out files. Echo something to in it will be sent to the channel. The out file contains everything you get back from the channel. This should be pretty basic and simple to understand, and that's the point.

So what about viewing the out file? cat? No. I don't think you want to be cat'ing the out file every few seconds to check for new conversation. This is the exact kind of thing tail was built for. Additionally tail can be combined another script in order to add syntax highlighting. Another option is using multitail and some rules. However, I didn't want to install another package, so I just wrote my own script for syntax highlighting with tail. Here's what my ii out files look like when viewed:

Colorizing ii output with regex-colorize

The colors can be changed easily via my script. Feel free to grab and modify my regexColorize script from my github. I use my regexColorize to view my out files like this:

tail -f -n 500 out | regexColorize

And that's about it... A simple setup for using the ii irc client. I usually throw my tails piped to regexColorize in tmux, but you can read about using tmux or screen in many other places. Finally - if you don't like my methods for using ii, other options include: PCW - Popup Chat Windows or a Multitail Solution. Regardless, I hope I will have made a few irssi, xchat, etc fans convert to ii.