> Could I write an automated tool that takes my clipboard, uploads it somewhere, and replaces the clipboard with an image URL? Probably. Or I could use a chat platform that supports images.
Which is exactly that automated tool, but already written by someone else and embedded directly into your UI. It's not that those images magically go over the wire straight from your clipboard without being hosted somewhere (especially that, AFAIR, Hipchat is XMPP-friendly).
I do understand why Hipchat, et al. are getting more and more popular - I was under contract for few weeks at a place that used Hipchat as a company-wide communication tool and I admit it was super-convenient (as long as your machine had enough free RAM to run it, which wasn't always true; for a chat client, this thing is heavy). But the thing is, IRC could easily be on par with Hipchat-like solutions if someone wrote proper UI extensions to popular clients.
Of course until someone actually goes and does that, we'll be stuck with Hipchats.
> Which is exactly that automated tool, but already written by someone else and embedded directly into your UI. It's not that those images magically go over the wire straight from your clipboard without being hosted somewhere (especially that, AFAIR, Hipchat is XMPP-friendly).
Oh I'm aware that it's not actually a magical feature, it just feels that way from a user interaction perspective. They all go up on S3 and have a text link, which gets an inline picture just like other image URLs.
From what I've heard about IRC, there's not an actual well-defined spec anywhere that all of the clients follow, which I'm guessing is part of why there aren't a lot of better IRC clients being written. It's easier to come up with your own protocol where you understand how it works and know exactly how every client will behave.
I do wonder why there isn't an open source effort for fancy features on top of XMPP. Not enough interest? Most developers don't do visual work and see IRC as "good enough"? Or it does exist and I've just never heard of it?
Which is exactly that automated tool, but already written by someone else and embedded directly into your UI. It's not that those images magically go over the wire straight from your clipboard without being hosted somewhere (especially that, AFAIR, Hipchat is XMPP-friendly).
I do understand why Hipchat, et al. are getting more and more popular - I was under contract for few weeks at a place that used Hipchat as a company-wide communication tool and I admit it was super-convenient (as long as your machine had enough free RAM to run it, which wasn't always true; for a chat client, this thing is heavy). But the thing is, IRC could easily be on par with Hipchat-like solutions if someone wrote proper UI extensions to popular clients.
Of course until someone actually goes and does that, we'll be stuck with Hipchats.