Matrix automatically creates a scrollable box for long messages instead of just filling the screen (or at least common matrix-clients like Element do that).
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I’ve tried it, but unfortunately it’s all bells and whistles when I just want to read text, even with the avatars removed, the conversation density remains…sparse, and it’s another memory hungry browser window… but hey, that’s just me 
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You might want to try the weechat plugin for now (CLI) or quaternion (still developed, but desperately needs a new release) for a calmer experience.
Take your time to settle on clients.
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Element has a setting for a more IRC-like displaying of messages, should be somewhere in the settings, like this: IRC ui layout by JorikSchellekens · Pull Request #4531 · matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk · GitHub
Maybe that helps, I think your concern is completely valid, and probably also shared by others!
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Alberto Berti via NixOS Discourse nixos1@discoursemail.com writes:
I’ve tried it, but unfortunately it’s all bells and whistles when I
just want to read text, even with the avatars removed, the
conversation density remains…sparse, and it’s another memory hungry
browser window… but hey, that’s just me
I use Matrix through WeeChat through weechat-matrix. Very IRC-like
experience, but also supports Matrix features like encryption (although
it doesn’t do cross-certification yet), multi-line messages, etc. Still
not quite as nice for me as IRC, but well beyond tolerable.
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Thanks, just to clarify and compare, with IRC i’m using Emacs’ erc package, with logging to a folder, one file per channel. I’ve tried an on development package for matrix, but it’s completely different from the old plain erc…it tries to do the chat the fancy way, with many colors, previews and such, which it’s not for me…and it wasn’t really working so well at the time
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<Fuchs> Arathorn: I shall see that we can discuss it at the meeting this weekend, it’s not an easy decision since Matrix obviously has a fair share of freenode users and there were some issues with the bridge
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The matrix-bridged IRC channels could be “upgraded”/redirected to the new *:nixos.org rooms using m.room.tombstone custom events
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I am still waiting for a Matrix client that I can love, but I LOVE THIS NEWS. I am very very happy to see this move. Thanks for those that did the work to make this happen, and that probably were planning ahead of time and getting this ready.
My condolences too, to folks. I was never too big into the larger Freenode community, but I can sympathize with the hard feelings and sense of loss, especially as I read about some of the details. I hope LiberaChat flourishes as well!
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In terms of bridging, I believe Pine64 uses GitHub - 42wim/matterbridge: bridge between mattermost, IRC, gitter, xmpp, slack, discord, telegram, rocketchat, twitch, ssh-chat, zulip, whatsapp, keybase, matrix, microsoft teams, nextcloud, mumble, vk and more with REST API (mattermost not required!) to bridge IRC, Discord, Telegram, and Matrix. My experience is very limited, but interacting with remote users on Discord was much better than my experiences with using Matrix.
I’ve made an RFC where we can discuss this major community change before making it official:
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What’s the best way to install (read: how did you install) weechat-matrix plugin on NixOS?
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I’m seeing improvements happening every day, so your characterisation is not really accurate.
Ex-freenode staff and OFTC are working on a Charybdis-based ircd, Solanum. If I search for multiline in the Solanum repo, I can see it is getting support for the multiline spec.
Edit: just to continue a bit, at the start of 2021 I wrote a summary article on what happened in the second half of 2020 regarding IRC spec and software (still unpublished as I wanted to guest-post it in a particular place and delays ensued). I was frankly overwhelmed with the amount of IRC-related activity I was seeing on all fronts. Certainly covid-19 seemed to have an effect in boosting the intensity of development and old projects being resurrected.
Edit pt. 2: so I finally published the article after quickly setting up a personal blog site: IRC technology news from the second half of 2020 | Ilmari Lauhakangas
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It would be great (for me) if someone revived this weechat PR for home-manager and made it easy to use and configure plugins like weechat-matrix there.
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It would be especially nice if the Matrix IRC bridge to Libera.Chat learned to make use of IRCv3 CAPs like multiline to improve the quality of the Matrix/IRC integration in the future.
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fwiw this is currently maintained and usable with a home-manager config like:
{ pkgs, ... }: let
url = "https://github.com/arcnmx/nixexprs/archive/master.tar.gz"; # also available as NUR.arc, no flakes sorry :<
arcChannel = builtins.fetchTarball { inherit url; }; # pin or use a channel import instead as needed
arc = import arcChannel { inherit pkgs; }; # only needed if you want to pull in deps from my repo
in {
imports = [
(arcChannel + "/modules/home/weechat.nix")
# alternatively: arc.modules.home-manager.weechat
];
config.programs.weechat = {
enable = true;
plugins.python = {
enable = true;
packages = [ "weechat-matrix" ]; # maybe optional if the plugin has pythonpath embedded?
};
scripts = [
pkgs.weechatScripts.weechat-matrix
# alternatively: arc.packages.groups.weechatScripts.weechat-matrix or arc.pkgs.weechatScripts.weechat-matrix (same difference)
];
# optional: pythonPackages = arc.pkgs.python3Packages;
};
}
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this is a terrible idea. Matrix is HUGELY complicated and has failed as software goals. The config file for a hosted matrix instance is 2000+ lines. Not to mention, this article about “both sides” of the debate: The Freenode Users Exodus as Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Boosted by Those Looking to Gain
Joining with XMPP (to MUC #nix#nixos.org@matrix.org via the matrix bifröst bridge) seems to work
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I think the shortcomings of synapse are relatively well known, but there is hope for the future with dendrite.
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