TODO – make a proper page
TODO – add my notes

http://www.centerim.org/index.php/Main_Page

4.22.7 ∞

This has been on my radar for some time now. I first fell in love with CenterICQ a very long time ago, and CenterIM is its fork.

It looks like CenterICQ has gone stale, so I’ll ignore it completely.

I was able to compile CenterIM just fine, and it’s very clumsy to use but it seems to work. It has lots of sound too.

But IRC is a complete disaster. Seriously, have none of the developers ever heard of IRC? Or have they ever actually used their program?

• Does not function with NickServ passwords. No, it’s not that it doesn’t have a feature, it does and that feature does not work. This really sucked because I was greeted with all kinds of clumsy UI nonsense before I learned that I was kicked off the server for neither renaming (which CenterIM should do) or submitting the proper password (again, which CenterIM says it does).
• All instant messenger and IRC programs in the history if intelligent life allow one to press enter to send a message. Some of them even have control-enter. CenterIM has Control-X. Seriously. The default expectation is for you to press control-x after every single line of chat you make. I only learned this after some frustrating searching for answers. I would later learn that this is configurable. So this is simply a broken default.
• ‘h’ for history? Come on. Really? I know they can use page up, because they use it elsewhere. So it looks like they just chose not to. It’s ironic that page up works after you press ‘h’. But here’s the thing, you have to slam escape twice to even get the ability to press h. Not annoyed yet? They truncate every line of history. That’s right, if the previous backhands aren’t enough, there’s a nice knee to the groin. Oh, but you can press enter to see any particular entry’s untruncated text. That’s like a pat on the back after the previous knee. Thanks guys.

• It seems to have sound for every single activity. I had to search and search to figure out how to customize this. It turns out that there’s a text config file. There seems to be no way to have IRC personal messages make sound, and no way to have IRC channel name-dropping make sound. Like I said, these guys haven’t heard of IRC.

At this point I just gave up. The only explanation for the complete and obvious inadequacy is that the developers have chosen to make CenterIM in this way. This is a fundamental issue with me, and there will be no hope in ever being able to use this program.