IPChat: a peer-to-peer, serverless, easy-to-use chat program.

IPChat is a ncurses-based chat program released under the GNU General Public License v2 which operates peer to peer, identifying contacts by IP address. It features a nice interface with colors, easy line editing, line history, terminal window resizing, a persistent contact list, online help, separate windows for each contact, and much more.

IPChat is a very simple and small chat program, written in C, where you find your partners (what we call contacts) by their IP addresses or hostnames, so you can use it with dynamic DNS. It can maintain a persistent contact list, and it works like an instant messenger: when a contact connects, you immediately see that they are connected, and they see you.

You have a “window” for every connected contact (like ircII or BitchX windows). On the right of the terminal, you see a list of all contacts, connected or not. That’s where you see which contacts are connected, which contacts said something while you were in another window, etc. You add contacts with the “/add” command. Other commands let you modify and remove contacts.