Boost Your Terminal Chat Experience with Handy Shortcuts and VIM8 Integration

Repository

https://github.com/wsdjeg/DotFiles

Supported key bindings

Tab completion for commands, similar to IRC clients.

Tab completion of user nicknames for quick replies.

Ctrl+U clears text from the start of the line to the cursor.

Ctrl+K clears text from the cursor to the end of the line.

Ctrl+W deletes the word immediately before the cursor.

Recent features

Arrow keys: <Up> cycles to previous history entries that share the current prefix; <Down> cycles to the next matching entries. <PageUp> scrolls up through the message history. <PageDown> scrolls down through the message history.

TODO

Friend‑message alerts with sound and status‑bar notification, including a mute mode.

Status bar showing opened chat windows and highlighting the active one.

Tab completion of friend nicknames after the /query command.

Tab completion of channel member nicknames after typing @.

Left/right arrow keys move the cursor within the message for in‑line editing.

Implement Bash‑style cursor movement shortcuts (word‑wise navigation, Home to line start, End to line end).

Highlight the cursor position.

Vim8 / Neovim job‑control support

Job control works in Neovim but is currently broken in Vim8 due to an upstream bug. The following examples demonstrate the Neovim approach, which succeeds, and the Vim8 approach, which fails.

Neovim example

let job = jobstart(['irssi'])
call jobsend(job, ['/join #neovim', ''])
call jobsend(job, ['hello', ''])

Vim8 attempt (fails)

let job = job_start(['irssi'])
let ch = job_getchannel(job)
call ch_sendraw(ch, "/join #vim
")
call ch_sendraw(ch, "hello
")

Related issue

https://github.com/vim/vim/issues/1198