Derek Taylor over at DistroTube has a nice video up on ERC, the builtin Emacs IRC chat client. IRC is, of course, invisible to most of the general public and maybe even some of the younger nerds. It’s a very old chat protocol that predates the Web and was popular back when Usenet was still an important way of sharing information. It’s sort of like the old Unix talk application but it’s run on a remote server and supports multiple people.
The #Emacs channel, for example is a place where Emacs users and developers can hang out, ask questions, and discuss matter important to the community. Sort of like Twitter but without the crazy people.
Taylor first gives a demonstration of vanilla ERC without any configuration. It’s surprisingly useful that way and probably more than adequate for occasional users. Then he goes over his, fairly minimal, configuration and shows the difference it makes in a session.
Most of his configuration just involves setting up some useful defaults—such as his nickname, IRC server, and the like—to make signing onto a session a bit simpler. It’s probably easier for new users to simply fire up ERC without worrying about configuration. The configuration can come later when they decide to become regular users.
The video is 14 minutes, 51 seconds so it should be relatively easy to fit in. If you’ve been curious about IRC and are an Emacs user, Taylor’s video is an excellent way to learn enough to try it out.
Update : pubic → public