Many IRC clients exist, and in 2004, the Japanese Vim user Madoka Machitani started implementing an IRC client in Vim. He called the client VimIRC, and what he constructed was a very feature-rich client that supports chatting in multiple channels on multiple networks. You can even use your normal Vim commands like I, /, ?, etc.

There is, however, a small problem when chatting from within Vim (besides the fact that it takes time from your actual project). In order for the chat to stay online, it has to create a loop that keeps updating everything. When you move to another buffer that has nothing to do with the IRC client, then this loop is stopped and you are eventually disconnected from the network. So the trick to get this chat client working optimally is to start it in a Gvim or Vim of its own. This can be done directly on the command line with:

gvim -i NONE -i .vimircrc -c VimIRC

where

.vimircrc

is the path to a Vim configuration file with VimIRC-specific settings.

You can find the latest version of the VimIRC script at this address: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=931

Look in the top of the script for a thorough description of how to install and configure it. You can chat with other Vim users if you use the IRC network irc.freenode.net and join the channel #vim. See you there!

This is an excerpt from the book Hacking Vim: A Cookbook to Get the Most out of the Latest Vim Editor by Kim Schulz and published by Packt Publishing; ISBN 978-1-847190-93-2. Reprinted with permission. For more information, visit http://www.packtpub.com.