IRC Gateway for Kato

KatIRC is an IRC gateway for Kato. This means that you can use your own IRC client. KatIRC will translate IRC commands from your client into Kato API calls and vice versa.

Note that this is alpha quality software, at best. It was a quick hack project, not production quality software, although the author does use it almost every day.

Requirements

Python 2 is required to run KatIRC. Exact versions of libraries are documented in requirements.txt. To install locally, use virtualenv and run pip install -r requirements.txt.

On a Debian-based system, you will need the following packages to use virtualenv and pip to install locally:

• python-virtualenv
• python-dev
• libffi-dev (required for OpenSSL support)

If installing manually without pip, you will need:

• Python 2
• Twisted. Ensure that twisted-words is included.
• AutoBahn 0.5.x

Usage

1. Start the server.

   ./main.py
   

   This starts the server on localhost, port 6667 (IRC).

2. Configure your IRC client.

   • Host: localhost
   • Nick: Any nick you would like
   • IRC Password: Your Kato username and password, separated by a space.

   Example irssi configuration:

   servers = (
     {
       address = "localhost";
       chatnet = "katirc";
       port = "6667";
       password = "[email protected] my_kato_password";
       autoconnect = "yes";
     }
   );
   

3. Start your client.

   Upon successful login, the server will list available Kato rooms and the associated IRC channel names.

Notable Differences from the Kato Client

• In Kato, if someone mentions you in any room, then you get a notification, even if you are not in the room. With KatIRC, you only get messages for channels that you have joined, even if you are mentioned in another room.

Mention Support

In Kato, you mention people with @User. In KatIRC, just use the IRC nick, like you would in any IRC channel. KatIRC automatically translates between Kato mentions and IRC nicknames, which most clients will treat as a mention.

In order to prevent false matches, such as in URLs, the nickname must be proceeded by a space (or be the first word) and must be followed by a punctuation character (or be the last word). In addition, a proceeding @ character, e.g. @nick, is allowed, and will be converted automatically.

@Everybody mentions are not supported at the moment.

Missing Features

Just about everything that is not basic chat is not supported. This includes:

• User status information (present, away, offline). For the moment, you will show up as offline to all other users.
• @Everybody mentions
• Email notifications for offline users.
• Multi-organization support
• Creating new chat rooms
• Chat room renames / rooms added while logged in
• User additions while logged in
• User typing indicators
• Lots of other stuff