Could work but seems dicey. A nick need not be registered to use IRC. Although the chathistory spec says it’s possible to get msg history for a nick, it makes no mention of nick registration. IIRC, users can use someone else’s registered nick while they are offline, no? So either it opens the door to users grabbing the DMs of others or the spec is an incomplete spec.

Even if that’s sorted, the recipient must be aware of chathistory and then know to proactively run the command to check for msgs -- IIUC. And some clients (like irssi) don’t even have the chathistory capability. I must send a quoted string to the server to use chathistory.

Contrast that with MemoServ, where only the sender needs to know how to send msgs and the recipient can be oblivious. MemoServ only accepts msgs for registered nicks. The recipient signs on and automatically they get hailed and msgs delivered.

So I probably want both. CHATHISTORY for getting a channel log and MemoServ for sending DMs with a degree of confidence that it will work.

from official docs:

https://github.com/ergochat/ergo/blob/stable/docs/USERGUIDE.md

Ergo integrates a "bouncer" into the server. In particular:

Ergo stores message history for later retrieval.
You can be "present" on the server (joined to channels, able to receive DMs) without having an active client connection to the server.
Conversely, you can use multiple clients to view / control the same presence (nickname) on the server, as long as you authenticate with SASL when connecting.

i only tried the web ui, which works. it's using some magic ircv3, so maybe that doesnt work with your method.

it doesn't have memoserv itself, but since it has chat history, you get dm's even if you're offline, at least that's how i understand it.

I appreciate the tip. I connected to them in the past and did not realise they had a memoserv. ATM they seem offline, or at least their onion is. I do this:

$ socat -T9999999 -s TCP4-LISTEN:16999,ignoreeof SOCKS4A:127.0.0.1:vrw7zcuarwx4oeju3iikiz3jffrvuijsysyznqf53mxizxrebomfnrid.onion:6667,socksport=9050,ignoreeof
$ irssi

Then I /connect to local port 16999 with notls_verify, and get:

-!- Irssi: Looking up 127.0.0.1
-!- Irssi: Connecting to 127.0.0.1 [127.0.0.1] port 16999
Waiting for CAP LS response...
-!- Irssi: Connection to 127.0.0.1 established
-!- Irssi: Looking up 127.0.0.1
-!- Irssi: Reconnecting to 127.0.0.1 [127.0.0.1] port 16999 - use /RMRECONNS to abort
-!- Irssi: Unable to connect server 127.0.0.1 port 16999 [Connection refused]

That used to work.

(edit) it worked again for a moment, but it’s not reliable.

ergo.chat

Of course. There’s a good xkcd or something for this you would love but I can’t find it.. something like “the more I read about Alice and Bob, the more I am convinced that they should just meet in person”.

Lol software engineers always trying to solve simple problems with a complex algorithm.

If it doesn’t have to be a software solution:

If they each get to choose their own name, they could use https://www.behindthename.com/random/random.php?gender=both&number=2&sets=1&surname=&all=yes

If it needs to be non-name names, this would work https://diceware.dmuth.org/

Both of these have a very low chance of duplicate names

There's tons of servers not listed anywhere (I run one, connection info is on my gopher site). The most well-known server list (netsplit) only lists servers with more than 50 concurrent users.

if the tor channel wont stay nailed then maybe it might not be feasible to avoid the irc-tls re-establishment/rekey

So just chat? But like, NSFW chat? Pretty curious...

Bet it's a bit more active and interactive than Lemmy NSFW

What you actually do there?