> But I get the vibe that we won't be seeing a client I like anytime soon; or it'll be a very minimalistic client with no support for all the fancy modern features, in which case I'd likely get the same or better experience with IRC anyway.
I don't know if you're the Emacs type, but you might be interested in https://github.com/alphapapa/ement.el. It feels kind of like an upgraded IRC, with support for features like images and rich text, and it tries to be privacy-respecting (e.g. read receipts and typing notifications are enabled by default, to imitate Element, but optional).
It doesn't support E2EE natively, but E2EE works through the Pantalaimon proxy, so it can be used with E2EE rooms that way. (Or if you don't care about E2EE rooms, like me (I mostly don't), you can use it in unencrypted rooms without using Pantalaimon.)
I don't know if you're the Emacs type, but you might be interested in https://github.com/alphapapa/ement.el. It feels kind of like an upgraded IRC, with support for features like images and rich text, and it tries to be privacy-respecting (e.g. read receipts and typing notifications are enabled by default, to imitate Element, but optional).
It doesn't support E2EE natively, but E2EE works through the Pantalaimon proxy, so it can be used with E2EE rooms that way. (Or if you don't care about E2EE rooms, like me (I mostly don't), you can use it in unencrypted rooms without using Pantalaimon.)