DMDircthe intelligent IRC client

In DMDirc 0.5 we introduced a feature described in the release notes as “intelligent tab completion for commands” (introduced in this blog post), which allowed commands to tell the tab completer about the arguments that they’re expecting. In that incarnation, commands can specify a bunch of extra words to add, and can toggle whether the default tab completion targets (nicknames, channel names, command names) are used.

In DMDirc 0.6, we’ve taken this one step further. Commands can now specify exactly what group(s) of targets should be used - so, for example, the first argument of the /ctcp command will now only tab complete to nicknames and channel names (but not command names, as it would have done in DMDirc 0.5).

We’ve also added support for what I call “deferred intelligent tab completion”. This comes in to play with the half-dozen or so commands that take another command as one of their arguments, such as the /alias command, which takes an alias name and then a command to associate with that alias. So, say you want to create an alias to start a timer that will CTCP PING a certain person after five seconds. You type: /ali<tab> ping /tim<tab> 1 5 /ctcp Nickname <tab>. When you hit that final tab, DMDirc suggests eight standard CTCP types (PING, FINGER, VERSION, etc…), even though the CTCP command is in the middle of a much larger command. How’s that for intelligent tab completion?

As far as I’m aware, no other IRC client comes close to the intelligence of DMDirc 0.5’s tab completer, so DMDirc 0.6’s puts us leagues ahead of the competition in that respect. But, as ever, we’re eager to hear any feedback or suggestions that you might have - feel free to leave a comment here, drop by #DMDirc on Quakenet to talk to us, or use the “Send feedback” feature (available in the help menu) of DMDirc 0.5.5.

We have just released version 0.5 of DMDirc.

0.5 has just under 100 features or improvements and 77 bug fixes since 0.4, the major additions in 0.5 are

* Added action wrappers for aliases and performs
* Added intelligent tab completion for commands
* Added server settings dialog
* Added support for themes
* Added support for character transcoding
* Added support for various command-line options
* Added installers for Windows and Linux

See the changelog for more information on this release. As always we recommend existing users to upgrade, and non-users to give it a go, come visit us in #DMDirc on Quakenet (see the help menu) with your feedback or just to visit.

0.5 can be downloaded for windows and linux

One of the first new features introduced after the release of DMDirc 0.4 was the intelligent command completion system. This allows commands to tell the tab completer about their arguments. The best way to explain this is with a few examples:

The /ctcp command: type /ctcp someone <tab><tab>, and instead of getting a standard tab-completable targets (such as command names, channel names, etc), you get the following:

00:03:18 | Multiple possibilities: VERSION, ACTION, USERINFO, CLIENTINFO, PING, FINGER, SOURCE, TIME

The /loadplugin and /reloadplugin commands allow you to tab complete the class names of relevant plugins.

One last example: the /set command allows you to tab complete both the domain and option names, so instead of /set general showcolourdialog, you can type /set g<tab> sh<tab>c<tab>.

This may not seem like much, but once you get used to using it, it’s hard to cope without it!

We have just released version 0.4 of DMDirc :) (Applause).

0.4 Brings many improvements over previous versions, with over 500 svn commits since 0.3, 0.4 includes amongst other things:

• The actions system (See these two blog posts)
• The plugins system (See this blog post)
• Completely new, faster, text pane
• Searching
• Over 100 improvements bug fixes

See the changelog and readme for more information on this release. We encourage existing users to upgrade, and non-users to give it a go, and let us know in #DMDirc on Quakenet what you think :)

0.4 can be downloaded here

This is a brief introduction to DMDirc’s developers.

I’m Chris, aka MD87. I’m the “core” developer of DMDirc, which means I’m responsible for most of the back-end logic, handling data storage, and a small mountain of others things. I’m also apparently the best writer, so I’ll probably be the one who posts most to this blog.

Next up, we have Shane, aka Dataforce. He’s primarily in charge of the IRC Parser (the code that interfaces between the client and the IRC server), but is also working on the plugins system, and writing the logging plugin. You can identity Shane’s code by the length of lines and the number of code conventions it breaks (if there are >300 char lines, and it breaks every convention you can think of, it’s probably his).

Last but not least, there’s Greg, aka Greboid. He’s in charge of the client user interface, and can often be found complaining on IRC about problems he’s having with it (his latest favourite subject is the TextPane rewrite we have scheduled for 0.4).

So, that’s us. We can all be found on IRC, in #DMDirc on Quakenet (irc.quakenet.org) among other places. We can also be contacted via e-mail by prepending our name (as above) to @dmdirc.com.