Zircon Release 1.18 ----------------------- 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 on 7.* tcl versions as all redundant spaces etc. have been removed. The code in this verion is pretty well unreadable. Tcl 8.* users do not need this version. There are also Source RPM and Zip versions of the archive if these are more suitable for you. Debian users can get a Debian package from the Debian FTP site. 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. 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 ------- REQUIREMENTS The software has been developed using: tcl Version Version 8.0p2 tk Version Version 8.0p2 N.B. This version of zircon will not run with releases of tcl earlier than 7.5/4.1. It will run with alphas of 8.1, but it hits bugs in the tcl interpreter some times. tcl/tk is available from ftp.smli.com in the directory /pub/tcl. The latest version can always be found on catless.ncl.ac.uk in /pub which is also the home of Zircon. You will also find here the latest development snapshot of zircon - this will always have bug fixes and new developements in it. 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. INSTALLATION These instructions are for Unix systesms. Zircon will run on Windows machines - however you will need to do a small amount tweaking of the software. If you want to do this and perhaps can help me set up proper distributions for these systems then get in touch. There is a Macintosh distribution that comes pre-installed. 1) Make sure you have tcl and tk installed. 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. If you are on a Windows system then double click on "winstall" - if you have tcl/tk setup correctly this should run the installer. 3) A window will appear. Set the values to ones that are suitable for your system. 4) Now click "Install" If youa re not using tcl/tk V8.0 or better then you may find that you get compilation or link errors for the modules in Sed. This does not matter and will not affect the running of zircon. If you do get errors and can identify the cause please let me know. 5) The file Preferences shows you what you might want to put in your .zircon/preferences file in your HOME directory. But see the information about Multiple network support. Read the file README.prefs for information about what you can configure. 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. Zircon still supports the existence of a system wide preferences file, but this can cause problems and I would advise people not to use this feature. I will be working on it for the next version to make it work better with netspaces than it does at the moment - I appreciate that the feature is useful where many people are using zircon on the same machine. WARNING: IN THE NEAR FUTURE I WILL BE PROVIDING A DIFFERENT WAY OF TAILORING ZIRCON'S APPEARANCE. ONE THAT WILL BE PORTABLE TO SYSTEMS OTHER THAN X-WINDOWS - BE PREPARED FOR THIS CHANGE!!!! 6) Off you go. Have fun! Also included is a little program that will help you find the "Meta" key that tcl/tk uses. This is called findMeta - run it and do what it says if you don't know which is your Meta modifier. It is in the util directory. Be warned that on some systems it doesn't help much! HELP ---- Mail problems to zircon@catless.ncl.ac.uk. The zircon mailing list can be joined by posting to zircon-request@newcastle.ac.uk. I moderate all postings to the list, and currently no postings have been sent on through - I have dealt with them all! I tend to use the list just for announcements and major queries about changes.