Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

You can find today's logs at https://irclogs.foswiki.org

Overview

IRC is a text-based conference calling, precursor to instant messaging, online publishing, conference room, etc., which is complementary to other communications systems. This includes non-realtime systems like wiki, email, and usenet. IRC is used for planning, discussing, chatting, support, and socialisation with fellow developers and wiki users.

We have people drop by the #foswiki IRC channel all the time with questions. We have had interesting discussions with some very experienced foswiki developers and site administrators, and some still working on their first installations.

Hopefully a greater number of (former) TWiki community members will spend some time on IRC. This will help further establish the utility of #foswiki for those that drop by. It's also fun. Show your support by idling in the #foswiki IRC channel, and chat away as much as you feel like.

IRC is an unmoderated forum supporting free speech. Most users of IRC dislike those who openly behave in an offensive manner; however, bear in mind that one person's definition of offensive may not be the same as another.

For total IRC newbies

What is IRC, some pages with basic IRC commands, some basic jargon and full list of IRC acronyms.

For community members who are helping others

Please refer to HelpingOthersInTheIRCGuideline.

Project Chat

• IRC channel name: #foswiki
• Link: #foswiki IRC channel
• https://irclogs.foswiki.org for older conversations.

Frequent chatters

Quite a few people regularly hang out in the channel. Please don't be discouraged if you visit #foswiki and nobody is talking. Hang out and say something. People do read and reply to what is said even if it's many hours later when they look at their IRC client again.

Who's who?

Contributor	IRC nick
AndreUlrich
AntonioTerceiro	terceiro
ArthurClemens
ColasNahaboo	ColasNahaboo, Colas, Colas_, ColasHome
CrawfordCurrie	CDot
DavidAndersen	dma
DavidPatterson	pattdi
DrakeDiedrich	dld
GeorgeClark	gac410
GilmarSantosJr	GilmarSantosJr
JasonHill	QBFreak
KennethLavrsen	Lavr
KoenMartens	gmc
LynnwoodBrown	lynnwood
MarkoRintamaki	NarsuMan
MarkusUeberall	uebera||
MartinCleaver
MartinGregory	GreenAsJade
MartinSeibert	MartinSeibert
MatthiasWientapper	mattzz
MattWilkie	maphew
MayankKumar	mayank
MichaelCorbett	MichaelCorbett
OliverKrueger	OliverKrueger
OlivierRaginel	Babar
PaulHarvey	pharvey
RafaelAlvarez	Soronthar
RasmusPraestholm	Cervator
RaulFRodriguez	RaulFR
RichardDonkin	RichardD or RichardDonkin
RobertJacobson	Teridon
SamHasler	Flenser
StephaneLenclud	Slion
SueBlake	unixhag
SvenDowideit
TravisBarker
TravisCampbell	HCoyote
WillNorris
The logger robot	FoswikiLogger

How to connect to IRC

Connecting through web based IRC client

Use InternetRelayChatWebInterface or https://web.libera.chat directly.

Connecting from an IRC client

To connect, launch an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client (http://www.irc.org/links.html contains a list of IRC clients). Connect to irc.libera.chat:6697 (tls). Additional information can be found at the http://libera.chat site. Use the command /join #foswiki to join the channel.

Trillian

In Trillian right click the middle connection circle representing IRC, select connection manager. You will then see the following:

Now add libera.chat to your server list. Select libera.chat from the server list, or type it directly into the group box; keep the default port as shown above.

Once you've typed this first page, click the 'Perform buffer' tab and select the 'On connection, perform this commands'. In the box type:

   /nick WikiName; /join #foswiki

Hit connect and you are done.

• Trillian is slick and intuitive. The only issue I had was their "hide" button (the green one which looks like mininize). It hides message window from both desktop and taskbar, and there is no obvious way to get it back. Here is the trick: click on trillian icon on taskbar - you'll get your contact list. On the right side there is dark area - hidden drawer (if you hover mouse, tooltip will say it). Click on it and it will open the drawer with all your hidden message windows. You can make drawer wider by dragging on the edge, although there are no affordances which might suggest that; leave it open.

Pidgin (formerly GAIM)

When you start Pidgin for the first time you should see an Accounts button. Click it. Create a new account for libera.chat; protocol IRC, Screenname your wikiname, Server irc.libera.chat. Then click on the "online" checkbox in the Accounts window. Wait patiently, and you should eventually see a Contact List window, and a ChanServ window. In the the lower window in ChanServ, type /join #foswiki. Bring the #foswiki window to the front, and chat away!

Other IRC Clients

I welcome folks to edit this page with specifics for additional IRC clients.

General instructions for new people, should work on any IRC client - commands start with /, anything else goes to the channel (chat room):

• Type /nick WikiName
• Type /join #foswiki
• Say hello!

Cross-platform:

• ChatZilla is included in Mozilla and is very easy to install and get going with
  • Also available as an extension for Firefox - install from addons.mozilla.org or Chatzilla homepage.
• http://www.xchat.org/ xchat XChat can be enhanced by tons of plugins written in perl, python... http://xchat.org/scripts/. A very good client, for linux and windows. A free Windows version is available at : http://www.silverex.info/download/

Unix/Linux:

• Google:Kopete
• irssi (text-mode client)
• Konversation (KDE client)

Windows:

• mIRC - old standby, shareware - Google:mIRC
• Visual IRC 2: The best one I saw for novices on windows: http://www.visualirc.net/
• Hydra IRC http://www.hydrairc.com/ is a new, user-friendly, and powerful client

PalmOS:

• upIRC - recommended, shareware but demo is very usable: http://www.smittyware.com/palm/upirc/. Works well on Treo 600s

MacOS:

• Colloquy
• Fire (MacOS)
• Conversation - "The Easy IRC Client for MacOS X" - Probably most easy-to-setup and user-friendly irc client for MacOS. Recommended.

[LOGGER]

[LOGGER_FOSWIKI] is a bot that should appear in the user list for the channel. You should be able to use your irc client to open a private chat with it, say anything to it and it will provide you with help. It maintains Foswiki's irc logs on the web, via the http://colas.nahaboo.net/Software/IrcLogger irclogger script.

Q&A:

• The welcome message said "talk to [LOGGER_FOSWIKI] for help"; how is that done?
  • /msg [LOGGER_FOSWIKI] help for instance (case is unsignificant), or open a "private conversation with user [LOGGER_FOSWIKI] on graphical clients
• Is there an IRC command for retrieving history or is Colas' web form the only|best way? - no, no IRC commands
• How about connecting from behind a hyper-active firewall? it's because of one of these I can only use IRC at night (PST) and the IRCers are all gone by then.
  • The best solution is the IRC web interface.