Editing ERC (software)

{{short description|IRC client for the Emacs text editor}}
{{Infobox software
| name                   = ERC
| logo                   =
| screenshot             = Erc-screenshot.png
| caption                = ERC running on GNU Emacs 24.3
| author                 = Alexander L. Belikoff<br />Sergey Berezin
| developer              = Amin Bandali, F. Jason Park, and other GNU Emacs developers and contributors
| programming language   = [[Emacs Lisp]]
| size                   = 944 KB
| language               =
| genre                  = [[IRC client]]
| license                = [[GNU General Public License|GPL-3.0-or-later]]
| website                = {{url|https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/erc.html}}
}}

'''ERC''' is an [[Internet Relay Chat]] (IRC) client integrated into [[GNU Emacs]]. It is written in [[Emacs Lisp]].<ref name="Stutz">
{{cite web
| url         = http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/59542
| title       = Chat it up in Emacs with IRC modes
| access-date  = 2009-10-12
| last        = Stutz
| first       = Michael
| date        = 2007-01-15
| publisher   = [[Linux.com]]
}}</ref><ref>{{cite web
| url         = https://lwn.net/Articles/216456/
| title       = The Grumpy Editor's Guide to graphical IRC clients
| access-date  = 2009-10-12
| author      = Jonathan Corbet
| date        = 2007-01-16
| work        = The LWN Grumpy Editor series
| publisher   = [[LWN.net]]
}}</ref>

==Features==
ERC includes<ref name="LL"/> message [[timestamp]]ing, automatic channel joining, [[Flood control (communications)|flood control]],<ref>{{cite book
 |title=Malicious Mobile Code: Virus Protection for Windows
 |first=Roger A. |last= Grimes
 |year=2001
 |publisher=[[O'Reilly Media]]
 |page=[https://archive.org/details/maliciousmobilec00grim/page/240 240]
 |chapter=Flooding
 |isbn=9781565926820 |url=https://archive.org/details/maliciousmobilec00grim
|url-access=registration
 |quote=irc flood control.
 }}</ref> and [[command-line completion|auto-completion]] of nicks and commands.
ERC can [[Syntax highlighting|highlight]] nicks and text for conversation tracking, 
highlight and optionally remove [[control character]]s, and allows [[URL]]s, nicknames and text to be converted to buttons. 
It provides input history, and separate buffers per server and channel. 
Notifications include channel activity on the Emacs mode-line, user online status, and channel tracking of hidden conversations.  ERC is multi-lingual, and provides auto-script loading at startup.<ref name="LL">{{cite web
| url         = http://www.linuxlinks.com/article/20090830123141514/ERC.html
| title       = ERC
| access-date  = 2009-10-12
| date        = 2009-09-13
| work        = 10 of the Best Free Linux IRC Clients
| publisher   = LinuxLinks
}}</ref><!-- for all features listed in this paragraph -->

ERC has a modular design, with many features implemented in "more than two dozen loadable modules" included in the default setup, such as ''autoaway'', ''fill'' (splits long lines), ''log'' (saves chat buffers), ''spelling'', ''bbdb'', which connects ERC to Emacs' [[BBDB]] for contact management, and ''replace'', which auto-replaces given text in messages.<ref name="Stutz"/><!-- for paragraph-->  ERC supports [[Secure Sockets Layer|SSL]]/[[Transport Layer Security|TLS]] for encrypted IRC communication.<ref>[http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ErcSSL "ERC SSL"]. Emacswiki.org.</ref>

==History==
According to the GNU project, ERC was first developed by Alexander L. Belikoff and Sergey Berezin.<ref name="GNUhist">{{cite web 
 |title=History 
 |publisher=[[GNU]]
 |work=Emacs Manual 
 |url=https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/erc/History.html}}
</ref>  
Berezin wrote that ERC was "originally written by Alexander L. Belikoff, then I improved it in many ways and promoted to version 2.0".<ref>{{cite web 
 |first=Sergey 
 |last=Berezin 
 |title=Projects 
 |url=http://www.sergeyberezin.com/project.php 
 |access-date=2011-07-13 
 |archive-date=2012-03-27 
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120327155135/http://www.sergeyberezin.com/project.php 
 |url-status=dead 
 }}</ref> The pair stopped development in 1999.<ref name="GNUhist"/> Mario Lang wrote that as of 2001 ERC had been "apparently abandoned", so he and Alexander Schroeder adopted it and created the ERC [[SourceForge]] project.<ref name="Lang">{{cite web
 |url         = http://snow.he.net/~mlang/emacs/erc.html
 |title       = ERC -- The Emacs IRC Client
 |access-date  = 2009-10-12
 |last        = Lang
 |first       = Mario
 |date        = 2003-03-14
 |publisher   = Mario Lang (ERC dev) personal website
 |url-status     = dead
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20110514234131/http://snow.he.net/~mlang/emacs/erc.html
 |archive-date = 2011-05-14
}}</ref> Berezin responded positively to news of the renewed effort and bestowed stewardship to the new developers; in the ensuing years, versions 2.1, 3, 4, 5, and 5.1 were released.<ref name="GNUhist"/>  ERC development moved from SourceForge to [[GNU]] in May 2006,<ref name="ERCGNU">{{cite web
| url         = https://www.gnu.org/software/erc/
| title       = ERC - an IRC client for Emacs
| access-date  = 2009-10-12
| publisher   = [[GNU]]
}}</ref><ref name="ERCSF">
{{cite web
|url=http://erc.sourceforge.net/
|title=ERC Project
|publisher=SourceForge.net
}}</ref>  
and ERC was officially incorporated into Emacs release 22.1 on June 3, 2007.<ref>{{cite mailing list
| url         = http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu-emacs/2007-06/msg00000.html
| title       = Emacs 22.1 released
| date        = 2007-06-03
| access-date  = 2009-10-16
| mailing-list = info-gnu-emacs
| last        = Stallman
| first       = Richard
| author-link  = Richard Stallman
}}</ref> ERC development now takes place inside the Emacs source-code tree.

==Related work==
ERC is one of two IRC clients included in the Emacs distribution; [[rcirc]] is the other.<ref name="Stutz"/> Circe and the "ascetic" ZenIRC are also Emacs-based IRC clients.<ref name="Stutz"/> According to its author, Circe incorporates ideas from ERC such as its ''activity tracker'' and others; it was developed as ERC became "difficult to debug and improve."<ref>{{cite web
| url         = http://www.nongnu.org/circe/
| title       = Circe - Yet Another Client for IRC in Emacs
| access-date  = 2009-10-12
| last        = Schäfer
| first       = Jorgen
| date        = 2005-10-21
| quote       = The best feature of Circe is the activity tracker, which many will know from ERC.
| publisher   = nongnu.org
}}</ref>

==See also==
{{Portal|Free and open-source software}}
*[[Comparison of Internet Relay Chat clients]]

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}
{{refbegin|2}}
* {{cite web
 |url          = http://xtalk.msk.su/~ott/ru/emacs/emacs-im/EmacsERC.html
 |title        = Emacs: ERC
 |access-date   = 2009-10-16
 |last         = Ott
 |first        = Alex
 |language     = ru
 |publisher    = xtalk.msk.su
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20090401055945/http://xtalk.msk.su/~ott/ru/emacs/emacs-im/EmacsERC.html
 |archive-date = 2009-04-01
 |url-status     = dead
}}
{{refend}}

== External links ==
* [http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ERC ERC] at [[EmacsWiki]]

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[[Category:Free IRC clients]]
[[Category:Emacs modes]]