TWiki IRC

Welcome to the people who found this URL in the IRC channel topic of #twiki!

You can find today's logs at http://koala.ilog.fr/twikiirc/bin/irclogger_log/twiki

TWikiIRC Abstract

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

Hopefully a greater number of TWiki community members will spend some time on IRC. This will help further establish the utility of #twiki for those that drop by. It's also fun. Show your support by idling in the #twiki 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 folks active on IRC

There is a lot of traffic. The noise level can be high at times, but there are also a lot of good discussions going on. Please help in bringing the pearls back to TWiki.org to the benefit of the larger TWikiCommunity. If you find that content discussed is of interest to the TWiki project and the community, it would be helpful if you create a or append to an existing FeatureBrainstorming or FeatureEnhancementRequest. If it is a support question you could submit a complete Support Q&A.

TWiki Chat

Join us on #twiki IRC channel.

Logs

Today's log: http://koala.ilog.fr/twikiirc/bin/irclogger_log/twiki?date=2008-05-09

To get an idea of what IRC is like, or to catch up on discussions you have missed, check the IRC logs for #twiki. ColasNahaboo's bot logs the channel and archives it with nice HTML rendering in virtually real time; additionally, old TWikiBot logs have been assimilated into the archives. Some stats on the use of the channel are also gathered there.

IRC Statistics

#twiki IRC statistics generated by PISG

Frequent chatters

Quite a few people regularly hang out in the channel. Please don't be discouraged if you visit #twiki 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.

TWikiContributor	IRC nick
	[LOGGER]
AndreUlrich
AntonioTerceiro	terceiro
ColasNahaboo
CrawfordCurrie	CDot
DavidAndersen	dma
JasonHill	QBFreak
KennethLavrsen	Lavr
KoenMartens	gmc
LynnwoodBrown	lynnwood
MartinCleaver
MartinGregory	GreenAsJade
MattWilkie	maphew
MS
OliverKrueger	OliverKrueger
PeterThoeny
RafaelAlvarez	Soronthar
RichardDonkin	RichardD or RichardDonkin
SamHasler	Flenser
SueBlake	unixhag
SvenDowideit
TravisBarker	Reiser
TravisCampbell	HCoyote
WillNorris

(when adding your name, please insert it in proper alphabetical order)

How to connect to IRC

Connecting from a web browser

Some modern browsers (e.g. Opera, Mozilla Suite) natively support the irc protocol and come with an IRC chat client included; try clicking on irc://irc.freenode.net/twiki to join the #twiki channel on IRC. If that didn't work, check the following methods.

Connecting through web based IRC client

There are web to IRC gateways that let you access IRC from a web browser. Just use the handy form below. Log in to twiki.org first and your Nickname will be your WikiName.

TWikiIRC Login
Nickname

Note: Don't abuse this resource or it will be discontinued. IP addresses are logged! Flaming, spamming, or drawing complaints from the Freenode staff will all result in banning.

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 a freenode.net server (freenode.net will work fine; or, choose a server for your country). Additional information can be found at the http://freenode.net site. Use the command /join #twiki 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 FreeNode to your server list. Select freenode.net 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 #twiki

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.

GAIM

When you start GAIM for the first time you should see an Accounts button. Click it. Create a new account for freenode; protocol IRC, Screenname your wikiname, Server irc.freenode.net (if you are in Europe use irc.eu.freenode.net), everything else default. 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 #twiki. Bring the #twiki 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 #twiki
• 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.
  • PTh can't recommend Chatzilla, it is very confusing on a network error: If your connection drops you see other people online, you can type, but you talk to yourself
• XChat - multiplatform (Linux, Windows, OS X): a good choice on Linux. Versions 1.x works well on windows (v2.x crashes a lot)

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:

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

Discussion

Other IRC Tools

if a TWikiContributor is planning on working on any TWikiIRC infrastructure, please view the previous versions of this topic, as it details helpful infrastructure no longer in place.

we are looking for a WikiBot replacement?

-- WillNorris - 16 Feb 2004

An RSS client to the twiki.org RSS feed would be wonderful This would announce new topics in #twiki as they are changed. It might prove very useful.

There's also a tool that should soon allow updating of a TWiki page from IRC. RichardDonkin noted that the author of Wikibot presented at the London Perl Mongers tech meeting in approximately Nov, 2002. The author added support for TWiki in Apr 2003 - see WikiBot for more information. It is somewhat similar to tools such as Chump and Scribot except Wikibot appends to Wiki pages instead of WebLogs.

I think that embedding an Java IRC applet client into this page would be useful. I note that WiiskiWiki (a code fork of TWiki, now dead) had some sort of support in this capacity. Perhaps, like with the WebDAV support it offered, it is time to bring back in such functionality?

-- MartinCleaver - 21 May 2003

CGI Gateway

FYI, I had to remove the web interface to IRC I had set up on koala: some maniac used it to start racist flame wars, thinking he was thus anonymous. Of course, as soon as I was warned, I reported his IP to freenode admins, but my host was banned from freenode. Thus you would want to take some care before setting up a web access: for instance making clear that you are not anonymous and that the IPs are logged, or making it password protected.

-- ColasNahaboo - 20 Mar 2004

[LOGGER]

I tried this IRC thing last night and seems there a few things missing, or maybe it's just my inexperience:

• The welcome message said "talk to [LOGGER] for help"; how is that done?
  • CN "/msg [logger] help" for instance, or open a "private conversation with user [logger] on graphical clients
• Is there an IRC command for retrieving history or is Colas' web form the only|best way? (the web log seems to have a lot of holes in it and a significant time lag too.)
  • CN you can get the logs also in raw form and TWiki syntax from the web logger page
• 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.
  • CN the only solution would be for me to re-activate the IRC web interface. I may do it with a password.

-- MattWilkie - 23 Mar 2004

[LOGGER] 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.

-- SamHasler - 24 Mar 2004

(very late) answers to MattWilkie questions above -- ColasNahaboo - 06 Aug 2004

IrcCloak

freenode is now offering custom host masks aka "cloaks" for IRC chatters who are associated with certain official projects. as you can see from the Cloak Domain List. If you would like to add your name to the list of people who are interested in obtaining a cloak, please include your info HERE.

For more information, see IrcCloak.

-- TravisBarker - 01 May 2004 - 09 Nov 2004 - 16 Mar 2005

For those who are not IRC gurus, here's a hostmask tutorial. Basically, a hostmask is a way of allowing someone to use an arbitrary nickname but still have an easily-checked public link to their role on a project (e.g. developer, core, etc).

-- RichardDonkin - 26 Nov 2004

I finally submitted the form to approve TravisBarker as the contact person. Sorry for the very long delay

Travis, thank you for the initiative. Anything that helps in advancing the TWiki project is a good thing, and you have my trust that you are doing the right thing

-- PeterThoeny - 02 May 2004 - 19 Mar 2005

Just talked to a person of Freenode to verify the data I submitted via form. We should be all set now.

-- PeterThoeny - 31 Mar 2005

IRC channel for German speaking users: #twiki.de (für deutschsprachige Benutzer)

-- FrankSpangenberg - 27 Jun 2007