ercn allows for flexible notification rules in ERC. You can configure it to notify for certain classes of users, query buffers, certain buffers, etc. It utilizes functions (and a small bit of copy pasta) from erc-match to get the job done. See the documentation for `ercn-notify-rules' and `ercn-suppress-rules' to set it up. When a notification is needed, ercn calls the `ercn-notify-hook' hook so that any notification mechanism available for your system can be utilized with a little elisp. Installation: ============= Via Marmalade (recommended) --------------------------- If you are on Emacs 23, go to marmalade-repo.org and follow the installation instructions there. If you are on Emacs 24, add Marmalade as a package archive source in ~/.emacs.d/init.el: (require 'package) (add-to-list 'package-archives '("marmalade" . "http://marmalade-repo.org/packages/") t) (package-initialize) Then you can install it: M-x package-refresh-contents M-x package-install RET ercn RET Manually (via git) ------------------ Download the source or clone the repo and add the following to ~/.emacs.d/init.el: (add-to-list 'load-path "path/to/ercn") (require 'ercn) Configuration ============= Two variables control whether or not ercn calls the ercn-notify-hook hook: * `ercn-notify-rules': Rules to determine if the hook should be called. It defaults to calling the hook whenever a pal speaks, a keyword is mentioned, your current-nick is mentioned, or a message is sent inside a query buffer. * `ercn-suppress-rules': Rules to determine if the notification should be suppressed. Takes precedent over ercn-notify-rules. The default will suppress messages from fools, dangerous-hosts, and system messages. Both vars are alists that contain the category of message as the keys and as the value either the special symbol ‘all, a list of buffer names in which to notify or suppress, or a function predicate. The supported categories are: * message - category added to all messages * current-nick - messages that mention you * keyword - words in the erc-keywords list * pal - nicks in the erc-pals list * query-buffer - private messages * fool - nicks in the erc-fools list * dangerous-host - hosts in the erc-dangerous-hosts list * system - messages sent from the system (join, part, etc.) An example configuration ------------------------ (setq ercn-notify-rules '((current-nick . all) (keyword . all) (pal . ("#emacs")) (query-buffer . all))) (defun do-notify (nickname message) ;; notification code goes here ) (add-hook 'ercn-notify 'do-notify) In this example, the `ercn-notify-hook' hook will be called whenever anyone mentions my nick or a keyword or when sent from a query buffer, or if a pal speaks in #emacs. To call the hook on all messages -------------------------------- (setq ercn-notify-rules '((message . all)) ercn-suppress-rules nil) (defun do-notify (nickname message) ;; notification code goes here ) (add-hook 'ercn-notify-hook 'do-notify) I wouldn’t recommend it, but it’s your setup. History 1.0.0 - Initial release. It probably even works. 1.0.1 - save-excursion, to avoid messing with the current line 1.0.2 - fix autoloads 1.1 - Added customize options; renamed `erc-notify' `erc-notify-hook'