Zircon Release 1.17

This is a release of Zircon, an X11 interface to Internet Relay Chat. The software is written in tcl/tk and uses its native features to provide network communications. Suggestions for improvements to Zircon are welcome. I am particularly interested in making the system useful for those users in groups where JIPS and other national character sets are used.

You will find that there are two versions of the zircon tar archive. One of them has the tag "min" in its name - this version has been run through my tcl minimiser program Frink and (in theory) should run faster as all redundant spaces etc. have bee removed. The code in this verion is pretty well unreadable.

Zircon 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. This reflects the power of tcl/tk *not* the fact that I am a wonderful programmer (I am, but that is a side issue :-)) 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

N.B. the user whose nick is zircon has nothing to do with this progam. You can sometimes find me in the #zircon channel.

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

but please send bug reports and questions directly to me rather than the list.

Enjoy!

Lindsay

The software has been developed using:

tcl Version 7.5
tk Version 4.1

N.B. This version of zircon will not run with releases of tcl earlier than 7.4/4.0

If you do not have tcl7.5/tk4.1 and want to use tcl7.4/tk4.0 then you will need to add either of the following extensions to your tcl system:

tclX Version 7.4a-p1
or
tcl-dp Version 3.3

If you must do this then I would recommend tclX over tcl-dp, however I would urge you to get tcl7.5 as this is where my main line of development and support will lie in the future. I will no be supporting these extensions after this release!!!

tcl/tk is available from ftp.smli.com in the directory /pub/tcl. tclX and tcl-dp are available from ftp.aud.alcatel.com in the directory /tcl/extensions, but the latest version can always be found on catless.ncl.ac.uk in /pub 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 are using it on a day to day basis. Zircon also supports a distributed drawing board, but please do not use this when there are non-Zircon users around as they get annoyed when they cant see the pictures.

For people who really cannot do without their ircII style commands a subset of these are also supported both in an optional command line and from Channel windows - see the MANUAL for details.

1. Make sure you have tcl and tk installed and have built tcl-dp or tclX.
2. Run the "installZircon" program - this is a tcl/tk program and it will look for a suitable interpreter using one of the usual names. if it cant find one then it will tell you.
3. A window will appear. Set the values to ones that are suitable for your system. If you click on the "Help" button, help information will be displayed as you move the mouse around. Once you are satisfied with the values, click on the "Verify" button. This will check that the values you have given will work.
4. If the verify was all right then click on "Install". This will install zircon. If you click on "Save" your configuratin will be saved for next time.
5. 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 your nearest irc help service :

   Server default -host x.y.z -port 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.

6. Off you go. Have fun!

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.

Known Features

1. Zircon does not work with pre-2.8 servers.
2. There is no JIS support. In fact there are problems when you even attempt to join a group with JIS 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.
3. Character escaping in the low level CTCP protocol is not done everywhere, but it *is* done for SED encrypted messages
4. You cannot configure anything other than Channels using the configuration panel. If you wish to configure Message channels then you have to do them by hand in the rc file. This restriction will be lifted in the next release, along (I hope) with a completely redone configuration system.
5. The Sketch Pad facility is not completely finished.