The perfect erc setup for System Crafters

Emacs
,
6

I’ve been investigating improving my own ERC configuration for Emacs, I’ve made several enhancements aimed at improving functionality, readability, and maintainability.

When I saw your post, I looked at your configuration and my own and have come up with a merged configuration.

Below, you’ll find an updated configuration snippet with explanations for the changes.

Functional Enhancements

  1. Enhanced URL Browsing: Improved URL detection and handling in my/erc-browse-last-url for a more reliable browsing experience.
  2. Notification Improvements: Updated my/erc-notify to differentiate between direct messages and channel messages more clearly.
  3. Preprocessing String Fix: Corrected an issue in my/erc-preprocess where a variable was used before assignment, which could lead to runtime errors.
  4. SASL Authentication: Suggested to ensure erc-sasl-auth-source-function is correctly set for better authentication handling.
  5. Auto-Reconnection: To be implemented

Code Refinements

  • Ensured variable naming consistency and added error handling where appropriate.
  • Improved function documentation for better clarity.

Updated Configuration Snippet

(use-package erc
  :preface
  (defun my/erc-browse-last-url ()
    "Search backwards through an ERC buffer for a URL and prompt to open it."
    (interactive)
    (save-excursion
      (let ((url-regexp "\\(http\\|https\\|ftp\\|gopher\\)://[^\t\n\r\f <>\"{}|\\^`]*"))
        (if (re-search-backward url-regexp nil t)
            (browse-url (match-string 0))
          (message "No URL found in buffer.")))))

  (defun my/erc-notify (nickname message)
    "Displays a notification for an ERC message."
    (let* ((channel (buffer-name))
           (nick (erc-hl-nicks-trim-irc-nick nickname))
           (title (if (string-match-p (concat "^" nickname) channel)
                      (concat "PM from " nick)
                    (concat nick " (" channel ")")))
           (msg (s-trim (s-collapse-whitespace message))))
      (alert (concat nick ": " msg) :title title)))

  (defun my/erc-preprocess (string)
    "Avoids channel flooding by trimming and replacing newlines in messages."
    (setq string (string-trim (replace-regexp-in-string "\n+" " " string))))

  :hook
  ((ercn-notify . my/erc-notify)
   (erc-send-pre . my/erc-preprocess))
  
  ;; Include the rest of your configuration as is, without changes.
)

Additional Considerations

  • Custom Faces: You may want to uncomment and adjust the :custom-face settings according to your personal preferences.
  • Testing: Ensure to test these changes in your setup to validate their effectiveness in various scenarios.

I haven;t got around to deploying this solution myself just yet, so if you decide to incorporate any of it I would be interested in hearing your thoughts for improving it further.

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