uii – a minimalist IRC client
uii is a minimalist text-based IRC client. uii is a shell script frontend for ii: using standard Unix utilities like tail and cat, it operates on files and directories representing input and output of servers, channels and other users.
If data is received from an entity with no accompanying uii process, a desktop notification is shown. uii also has limited highlighting; if the nick name, preceded by a space character, occurs in the output, it is printed bold (using ANSI escape codes) and a bell character is emitted.
Users should be aware that uii output may look garbled if their terminal emulator does not show unicode glyphs correctly (xterm) or has “clever” redraw behaviour (urxvt). Programs embedding the VTE Terminal Widget (like GNOME Terminal or Xfce Terminal) work well; I use Terminator, as it can set an urgent hint when a bell character is output.
If you have read this far, you should check out uii‘s source code.