OK, I'd like to apologise and print a correction to a statement I've made (more than once) in the past: "why re-invent the wheel? If you're going to add chat to your game, use IRC!" (or similar).
After answering a plea for help from someone trying to build a quick IRC server from scratch, I'm flabbergasted - this is a truly ghastly, horrible, sickeningly stupid protocol. All records of it's very existence should be burned on a bonfire at the earliest possible convenience, save for a few printouts which should be placed in a museum as an example of the depravities that result from people hacking together a protocol who don't have the faintest idea what they're doing.
...or something like that.
I'd used IRC for many years. I'd known a lot of it's internals. But I'd never tried to implement it, and it's about 10 times as complicated as HTTP ! (despite having probably a tenth of the functionality
So. Um. Anyone got experience with alternative chat protocols that are a little less FUBAR? I'm fighting the urge to say "You'll have to invent your own..."
Again, there's plenty I've *used*, but never implemented, like Jabber etc.