ctx->guides->irc-notify

Delivering remote notifications for fun and profit

The simple notification system explained here is based on the urgency hint for the window manager and the terminal bell escape sequence. The programs involved are the window manager, terminal emulator, terminal multiplexer if you use one, and your remote IRC client. For this setup we will be using:

Other combinations of software are obviously possible. First thing is to make XTerm or URxvt translate the bell to an urgency hint. Put in your ~/.Xresources:

XTerm*bellIsUrgent: yes
URxvt*urgentOnBell: yes

Don't forget to update you resource database by running xrdb ~/.Xresources. By default DWM inverts the colors of the tag icon when it receives the urgency hint from an application on that tag. To test how it appears you can open a new (now configured) terminal emulator and ring the bell:

sleep 1 && printf '\x07'

The sleep is just to give you time to switch to another tag. To make tmux pass bells through for all windows, even those not in focus add to ~/.tmux.conf (note that this is usually the remote host config you want here):

set -g bell-action any

Finally, to make Irssi set the bell on private messages and nick highlights:

/set bell_beeps ON
/set beep_msg_level MSGS HILIGHT
/save

Cheers!

lostd@ and sin@