(I also sent this to the bug tracker, but BzrForEmacsDevs said to send it here.)

Attached is a bzr bundle which adds an rcirc handler for 317
(RPL_WHOISIDLE) which makes the printed string human-readable. It
formats the idle time as e.g. 8h 32m 19s and the sign-on time using
"%c" (according to the locale). The bundle also includes the function
rcirc-format-seconds which does the actual formatting of the idle
time.

-- 
Deniz Dogan