Zircon Release 1.09 ----------------------- This is a release of Zircon, an X11 interface to Internet Relay Chat. The software is written in tcl/tk and uses the tcl-dp TCP extensions to provide network communications. Beta testers are asked to provide comments on the interface that the system provides and to test it under of a variety of conditions. Please resist the temptation to hack the code. We will reach a stable, proper release quicker if we can centralise changes to the program, however suggestions for improvements in the code will also be welcome. We are particularly interested in making the system useful for those users in groups where JIPS and other national character sets are used. Zircon was implemented as a way of learning tcl/tk and has taken about 10 weeks to get to its current state of development. It has more features than you could possibly imagine and implements nearly everything that the irc II clients support as well as many other useful and interesting features. tcl/tk is a wonderful system and you need it on your machine *NOW*. Please send all reports, comments and suggestions to: zircon@catless.newcastle.ac.uk We can also often be found on channel #GB and will keep open a channel #zircon when we are around. N.B. the user whose nick is zircon has nothing to do with this progam. Mail zircon-request@newcastle.ac.uk to be added to the Zircon users mailing list. Messages to the mailing list should be sent to zircon@newcastle.ac.uk Enjoy! Jimbles and Lindsay --------------------- REQUIREMENTS The software has been developed using: tcl Version 6.7 7.0b3 tk Version 3.2 3.3b3 tcl-dp Version 1.0ak 2.0 N.B. tcl-dp 2.0 HAS NOT BEEN OFFICIALLY RELEASED YET and so is not currently available!!!! You must have the dpwish program rather than the usual wish for zircon to be runnable. tcl/tk is available from harbor.ecn.purdue.edu in the directory /pub/tcl. tcl-dp is available there also, but the latest version can always be found on catless.ncl.ac.uk which is also the home of zircon. You can configure lots of stuff using X resources, thus it is possible to make buttons and text associated with particular users and channels appear in special colours and fonts. The system is much easier to use than the usual UNIX interfaces to irc and a lot of people ar eusing it on a day to day basis. INSTALLATION Make sure you have tcl and tk installed and have built tcl-dp. Edit the Makefile and configure the path to dpwish, the name of the directory where zircon files are going to live, and where you want the main program to go. Then type make install Now create a file called rc in the zircon directory. This acts as a system wide rc file for all zircon users. Minimally put in here the name of the default irc server that you wish users to connect to, and the default port if it is not 6667. Also useful would be the name of you rnearest irc help service : set defaultServer x.y.z set defaultPort 9999 set helpService "help_XX" The file DOTzirconrc shows you what you might want to put in your .zirconrc file in your HOME directory, but any of that stuff can also go in the rc file in the zircon library directory. The HOME rc file overrides the system one. You will also want to edit the file zircon.ad which can be found in the zircon library directory. This contains application defaults for X resources and is read by zircon on startup. HELP Mail problems to zircon@catless.ncl.ac.uk. The zircon mailing list can be joined by posting to zircon-request@newcastle.ac.uk and posted to at zircon@newcastle.ac.uk You can usually find help in the #zircon channel on IRC as well. POSSIBLE FUTURE FEATURES 1) Automatic AWAY canceling when you type in a window. 2) Nice icons instead of boring old buttons and text - suggestions welcome. 3) Face icons for users. Probably using the faces mail icon database. 4) Sound 5) Support for extended Server features KNOWN PROBLEMS 1) Zircon does not work with pre-2.8 servers. 2) SED is not supported. DCC Chat is supported directly within Zircon but Send and get require binary I/O and are provided using external programs. Error handling is rudimentary at the moment. 3) There is no JIPS support. In fact there are problems when you even attempt to join a group with JIPS characters in its name as tcl tries to interpret the $ characters in them.... I have tried the JIPS version of tcl but it didnt help. 4) Character escaping in the low level CTCP protocol is not done. 5) There are some weird things that can happen with menu handling and when connections get closed suddenly. Some of these may be tcl/tk problems that will go when we move to the new release.