That said, it is usable for basic chatting; if you use a good IRC client, you won't have many problems. See the support matrix (pun intended) below for what it can do. The issue tracker is here: https://todo.sr.ht/~emerson/reflectionircd
There's a few things "different" from a standard IRC network:
- You can't PM users like normal. Direct messages are notated by the `&` channel prefix. Once joining channels is implemented, you can join the `&` channel and it will auto-invite the user.
- In order to highlight users, you need to prefix their nick with an `@`, so `@emerson: hi`. Reflection automatically expands this to the user's MXID, so even though it's annoying, it's needed to stop inadvertent highlights for now.
- Only necessary IRC commands are implemented, it's not a full-featured IRC server.
## Running
Copy `config.example.json` to `config.json`, edit the values if needed, then `npm run build` and then `node reflection.js` to start it
## Authentication
Authentication is done via `SASL PLAIN`, the username is your mxid and the password is an access token from another session plus your server domain, separated by a `:` (so `access_token:matrix.org` if your server is matrix.org). Note this is the domain for `m.server`, not necessarily the homeserver domain. You can find this value by going to https://yourhomeserver.tld/.well-known/matrix/server. If your server is using port 443, you don't need to include the port.
## Support
The main chat is `#reflectionircd` on Libera ([webchat](https://web.libera.chat/gamja/?channel=#reflectionircd)), which is available on Matrix as well at [`#reflectionircd:matrix.org`](https://matrix.to/#/#reflectionircd:matrix.org)
It's for people who want to use their IRC client to chat on Matrix. It's like Bitlbee or Matterbridge, but focused specifically on IRC <-> Matrix, as well as being a reference client for IRCv3 specifications.
It's not meant for community use; if you are a homeserver admin and want to allow your users to use IRC, you would be better off with [heisenbridge](https://github.com/hifi/heisenbridge).
### Why are there different channel prefixes?
Because matrix room names are often long and have characters that IRC channel names can't use, Reflection has to attempt to find a suitable IRC equivalent
`#` channels are channels that have a canonical alias for us to use.
`&` channels are two-person channels (either DMs or normal channels).
`!` channels are the room IDs of channels whose names can't be converted into IRC-friendly names.
Note that there are no PMs, because Matrix doesn't differentiate between DMs and normal two-person channels, any channel with two people in it gets marked as a `&` channel.
Authentication is done via `SASL PLAIN`, the username is your mxid and the password is an access token from another session plus your server domain, separated by a `:` (so `access_token:matrix.org` if your server is matrix.org). Note this is the domain for `m.server`, not necessarily the homeserver domain. You can find this value by going to https://yourhomeserver.tld/.well-known/matrix/server.
The main chat is `#reflectionircd` on Libera ([webchat](https://web.libera.chat/gamja/?channel=#reflectionircd)), which is available on Matrix as well at [`#reflectionircd:matrix.org`](https://matrix.to/#/#reflectionircd:matrix.org)
