xchat.sgml

The major functionality added in this release includes: - Rootless mode in X11 - Widget Templt

  <item>T - Topic lock
  <item>N - No outside messages to the channel
  <item>S - Secret
  <item>I - Invite only
  <item>P - Private
  <item>M - Moderated
  <item>L - User limit (also has a text box)
  <item>K - Key (also has a text box)
 </itemize></p>
 <p>The far right button, with the arrow, toggles the user-list
 </p>
 <sect1>The text box
 <p>The text box contains the text from the contained object (channel, nick
 etc) and the output from commands entered into the input box.
 </p>
 <p>It is usually a GTK text box, whose options can be controlled from &dquot;Settings
 - Setup - Channel Windows&dquot;. However it can also be a ZVT (Gnome only),
 and this allows extra options like pseudo-transparent backgrounds.
 </p>
 <sect1>The user-list
 <p>The user-list contains every nick in the current channel. Nicks may have
 a green or yellow dot to the left of the nick. A green dot marks a chanop and
 a yellow dot shows the nick has a voice (e.g. can post to a moderated channel)
 </p>
 <p>Below the list are a set of buttons, which are controlled from &dquot;Settings
 - User-list Buttons&dquot;. Clicking on one runs a certain command with reference
 to the selected nick in the user-list.
 </p>
 <p>Right clicking on a nick brings up a pop-up menu which can be configured
 from &dquot;Settings - User-list Pop-up. Selecting one runs a certain command
 with reference to the clicked nick in the user-list.
 </p>
 <p>Multiple nicks can be selected by holding down the Shift key.
 </p>
 <sect1>The input box
 <p>To the left of the input box there is a label, containing your currently
 active nick, possibly with a yellow or green dot to the left of it see 3.4.
 </p>
 <p>Entering text into the text box and pressing enter will process the entered
 text. It can be processed in 1 of 2 ways, it is either sent to the contained
 object (a channel or nick) or if it starts with a &dquot;/&dquot; it is processed
 as a command.
 </p>
 <p>To the right of the input box is the conference toggle. When set this squashes
 all join/leave messages so you can have an uninterrupted conversation.
 </p>
 <sect>Getting Started
 <p>Firstly, if IRC is new to you then read section 1.2.
 </p>
 <p>Startup XChat and select &dquot;Server List&dquot; in the &dquot;X-Chat&dquot;
 menu. This will display a list of default IRC servers. If you have your own
 IRC server you like then hit &dquot;New Server&dquot; and enter it's details
 at the bottom.
 </p>
 <p>Now fill in your personal details at the top.
 </p>
 <p>I will assume you are using a local server (not in the default list) of
 127.0.0.1 and my nick of Nebulae. If you ever do use my nick I will NOT be
 happy, so choose one of your own or open /usr/dict/words and choose one from
 there.
 </p>
 <p>Press connect and (hopefully) you will connect. The opening text will scroll
 down the main text-box with the MOTD (Message Of The Day). Once that has stopped
 click on the input box and type: 
 </p>
 <p>
 <verb>/join &num;dgg5ds 
 </verb></p>
 <p>Make 'dgg5ds' anything you like. You should see a line saying &lt;your
 nick&gt; (&lt;your address&gt;) has joined &num;channel and your nick should
 show up in the user-list with a green dot by it showing that you are chanop
 (since you just created the channel). Since you just created the channel you'll
 also see a line saying you have given yourself chanop status.
 </p>
 <p>If you type normal text (without a leading /) then you will see it come
 up in the channel with your nick before it. If anyone else was in the channel
 they would also see that.
 </p>
 <p>Click in the text box in the tool-bar, type My Topic and hit enter. The
 topic of the channel is now My Topic, you will see a line telling you so. If
 you play about with the letter buttons on the tool-bar you can change the channel
 modes (more on this later).
 </p>
 <p>If you hit too much too quickly you will see XChat &dquot;slow down&dquot;,
 this is because if you flood (send too much data too quickly) the server will
 drop the connection so XChat limits the amount of data it will send, this can
 make it seem slow, but it will always catch up in the end.
 </p>
 <p>Now if you type /msg &lt;your nick&gt; Hello and hit enter in the input
 box (at the bottom) you send a private message to yourself, saying Hello. You
 wouldn't normally do this, if you have such bad hand-eye co-ordination that
 you need to type something and read it, you need to see a doctor, this is just
 for testing. A new window will be created under the current one, and its leaf
 will appear in the tool-bar, with the text in red to show that it has changed.
 </p>
 <p>If you click on the new leaf the window will come to the top and you'll
 see the message Hello from yourself. When you type into the input box in this
 window the text will goto the object in the window, in this case yourself,
 in the last case the channel &num;dgg5ds. If you type anything you will see
 it echoed back at you. Since you aren't all that interested in messaging yourself
 (I hope) click the X button on the tool-bar (top - left) and the window will
 disappear, showing the first window.
 </p>
 <p>Now if you select your nick in the user-list and hit the button marked
 Whois at the bottom of the user-list your whois information will be shown in
 the text box. This information comes from the server and can be read by anyone
 on IRC.
 </p>
 <p>The whois information can also be accessed as a command. In the input box
 type /whois &lt;your nick&gt; and hit enter. Note the leading / showing it
 is a command, without this the text would be sent to the channel. The buttons
 map onto these commands, click the Settings menu and select User-list buttons.
 A dialog will appear showing each button and the command it runs when pressed,
 you can add your own. Note that &percnt;s in the command is replaced by the
 nick of the selected entry in the user-list.
 </p>
 <p>Now if you right click your nick in the user-list a number of options come
 up. These map to commands like the buttons, select User-list Pop-up in the
 Settings menu.
 </p>
 <p>The CTCP (Client To Client Protocol) options send a private message to
 the clicked nick which is picked up by their IRC client and dealt as a type
 of command. Almost always a CTCP message is sent back. These replies can be
 set in Settings - CTCP Replies. The CTCP VERSION reply is automatic and can
 be toggled by a /hidever command, but you can still setup a CTCP reply which
 is run as well as the automatic one.
 </p>
 <p>If you are stuck typing /help -l (thats an lowercase L and a 1) might give
 you a hint.
 </p>
 <sect1>Mailing Lists
 <p>XChat has two mailing lists which you may want to subscribe to, xchat-discuss
 and xchat-announce (kindly hosted by nl.linux.org). To subscribe send a message
 with no subject and this in the body:
 </p>
 <p>
 <verb>subscribe list-name
 </verb></p>
 <p>to [e-mail] where list-name is either xchat-discuss or xchat-announce.
 You will be asked in a reply to confirm your subscription. xchat-discuss is
 a general mailing list where you can ask for help, bounce ideas etc off other
 XChat users. xchat-announce is a moderated list (only zed and I can post to
 it) where announcements (such as new versions) are posted. *Do not try to post
 to xchat-announce*.
 </p>
 <p>If you have any queries about the mailing lists just mail me (Adam Langley)
 at [e-mail].
 </p>
 <sect1>Channel Modes
 <p>Each channel can have a series of modes. Only chanop's can change a channels'
 mode. The modes can either by set by the letter buttons on the right of the
 tool-bar or by using the /mode command. Modes can also be set by some other
 commands, like /op, /deop or /ban. The following is a list (which is not complete)
 of the channel modes.
 </p>
 <p>
 <itemize>
  <item>T - Topic Lock - With this set only chanop's can change the channel topic
  <item>N - No outside messages - Normally people not in a channel can /msg the
 channel, with this set only people who have joined the channel can send to
 it
  <item>S - Secret - With this set the channel is not listed in the channel list
 (/list), except if you are in it. This cannot be set with Private (see below)
  <item>P - Private - With this set the channel name and topic is not listed in
 the channel list (/list), except if you are in it. This cannot be set with
 Secret (see above)
  <item>I - Invite Only - With this set people can't just /join the channel, they
 have to be /invite'ed by someone in the channel
  <item>M - Moderated - With this set only chanop's and voice'ed nicks can send
 to the channel
  <item>L - User Limit - With this set only a set number of people can join the
 channel
  <item>K - Key - With this set anyone who tries the join the channel has to pass
 this key (also called the password) as argument 2 to the /join command
  <item>B - Ban - This can be set more than once (with different options). Each
 person who tries to join the channel has to be outside all the bans. Simply
 setting a ban stops anyone who matches the bad from joining
  <item>O - Op - This can be set more than once (with different options). Each
 nick that is set +o becomes a chanop
 </itemize></p>
 <sect1>Scripts and Plugins
 <p>Scripts and Plugins allow you to extend XChat without editing the code.
 For information about writing them see section 7. Scripts are Perl scripts
 and to use them you must have Perl already on your system and have built Perl
 support in when building XChat. Plugins are shared libraries (.so files) that
 are dynamically linked and unlinked to the XChat process image.
 </p>
 <p>On startup all files ending with .pl in &tilde;/.xchat are auto loaded.
 To load a script manually either use the /load command or select &dquot;Load
 Perl Script&dquot; from the &dquot;Scripts and Plugins&dquot; menu. To unload
 all scripts either use the /unloadall or select &dquot;Unload All Scripts&dquot;
 from the &dquot;Scripts and Plugins&dquot; menu.
 </p>
 <p>To load a plugin either use the /loaddll command or select &dquot;Load
 Plugin&dquot; from the menu. The plugin should then be listed on a /listdll
 command and in the &dquot;Plugin List&dquot;. You can either remove plugins
 one by one with the /rmdll command or in the Plugin List, or you can unload
 all by selecting &dquot;Unload All Plugins&dquot; from the menu.
 </p>
 <p>You don't have to manually unload scripts and plugins before quitting XChat.
 A list of scripts and plugins for download is on the <url url="http://xchat.linuxpower.org" name="XChat homepage">.
 </p>
 <sect1>DCC Support
 <p>DCC stands for Direct Client Connect. It is a system whereby two clients
 connect to each other directly, bypassing the IRC server. XChat supports sending
 3 types of information across a DCC link:
 </p>
 <p>
 <itemize>
  <item>Files - Text or binary
  <item>Text -A direct chat link
 </itemize></p>
 <p>You can send a file by using the &dquot;/dcc send nick file&dquot; command
 or by selecting the nick in the user-list and clicking the send button. The
 DCC send window should then show the status of the transmission. When someone
 sends a file to you the DCC Receive window will open up allowing you to accept
 or abort to transfer.
 </p>
 <p>To setup a DCC chat line either use the &dquot;/dcc chat nick&dquot; command
 or select the nick from the user-list and click chat. Once the DCC connection
 is accepted any private /msg's to the nick will go across the DCC link instead.
 When someone offers a DCC chat link with you, you can accept with the command
 &dquot;/dcc chat offeringnick&dquot;
 </p>
 <sect1>Customization
 <p>If you select Settings - User Commands then you get a dialog listing a
 set of shortcut commands. When you type any of the words in the left hand column
 as a command (with a leading /, of course) then the text on the right hand
 side is executed. Any &percnt;n (e.g. &percnt;2 or &percnt;3) are replaced
 with the nth argument to the command. Any &amp;n (e.g. &amp;2 or &amp;3) are
 replaced with the nth argument and all following text, including spaces. &percnt;c
 is the current channel and &percnt;n is the current nickname. User commands
 can be separated with a ; (semicolon), but be careful not to put a space after
 the ;
 </p>
 <p>The same goes for CTCP Replies, Userlist Buttons, Userlist Popup, but with
 one exception with Userlist Popup. With this you can create sub-menus by adding
 lines with a name of SEP and a value of the sub-menu name. To end the sub-menu
 use a list with a name of ENDSUB and a value of the same name.
 </p>
 <sect1>Tab Nicks
 <p>Say you were in a channel with these nicks:
 </p>
 <p>
 <itemize>
  <item>aaaaaaa
  <item>aaaaaab
  <item>Nebulae (yourself)
  <item>zed
 </itemize></p>
 <p>If you wanted to direct a message to zed you would type "zed: &lt;message&gt;"
 into the input box and hit enter. Rather than do that you can use Tab Nick
 Complete. Just type "z" and hit tab and XChat will find the first nick in the
 current channel that matches what you have typed and use that nick. In this
 case the text in the entry box would become "zed: ". Now if you wanted to direct
 a message to aaaaaab you would type "a" and hit tab. But that will find the first
 matching entry, which in this case is aaaaaaa so the input box would hold "aaaaaaa:
 " - not what you wanted. So hit Shift-Page Down and XChat uses the next entry
 in the user-list (Shift-Page Up uses the next up), the input box will now hold
 "aaaaaab: ". Next time you enter "a" and hit tab, however, XChat will select aaaaaab
 because by using the Shift-Page Down/Up buttons to tell it that it got the
 wrong nick and XChat will learn.
 </p>
 <sect1>Replace
 <p>Now select Settings - Replace Popup. A list dialog will appear with a series
 of default entries (assuming you haven't changed them). One of the entries
 should by "r" and "are", if not add it. Now start typing into any input box and
 at some point type " r ". The "r" will change to "are". 
 </p>
 <p>The replace feature runs every time you hit space in an input box and finds
 the last word you typed. If that word is in the list it replaces it with its
 entry. If the word is in ' ' marks like 'r' the word is not replaced. If the
 word contains an "'" (that's a single quote mark) in it, the part before the
 quote mark is checked. If that part is found the part is replaced, the quote
 mark dropped and the part after the quote mark is appended. For example if