To contradict my last post, I recently decided to replicate my Weechat IRC config in Emacs' ERC.

There is a nice Weechat feature that allows you to modify the message color for messages sent by nicks that match a given regex. ERC can easily do this as well and the easiest way to do this is by adding some nicks to a list of "pals" and "fools".

After making fools' messages appear in a dimmed font, the next feature that I was missing was the ability to show/hide messages from fools at the click of a button. Basically, I like to collapse all fools' messages so I can catch up on the real chat and then maybe see what the fools had to say later.

Here's what I came up with after peeking into the erc.el file in the emacs source since I couldn't find how to do the exact thing online.

The trick is all in 'erc-match-toggle-hidden-fools, which will do exactly what it says - toggle your hidden fools. A caveat is that I have to add 'set-buffer-modified-p instead of hitting RET after triggering 'erc/toggle-fools so that the messages are shown/hidden.

Within use-package erc :preface :

(let ((hidden-fools t))
  (defun erc/toggle-fools ()
    (interactive)
    (setq hidden-fools (not hidden-fools))
    (erc-match-toggle-hidden-fools hidden-fools)
    (message "hidden fools: %s" (if hidden-fools "on" "off"))
    (set-buffer-modified-p t)))

Within use-package erc :config:

erc-fools '("Marvin2")
erc-fool-highlight-type 'all

The hook is necessary for 'erc-match-toggle-hidden-fools to function properly, according to the documentation on the function definition.

:hook
 ((erc-text-matched . erc-hide-fools))
:bind
 :map erc-mode-map
 ("C-c -" . 'erc/toggle-fools)))

(Marvin2 is shown/hidden)