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TalkSoup is a fully-featured IRC client written with the GNUstep framework
===============================================================================
Copyright (C) 2003 Andy Ruder
TalkSoup is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
Comments are welcome.
===============================================================================
Questions covered in this FAQ:
1. Overview
1.1 What is GNUstep? Where do I get it?
1.2 What is so special about TalkSoup?
1.3 what is a bundle? a filter? a plug-in?
2. Installation
2.1 How do I install TalkSoup as a regular user?
2.2 I get messages about it not being able to find bundles. What's
wrong?
3. Usage
3.1 I'm new to IRC? Where do I start?
3.2 Wow, this is really cool! Are there any IRC channels where I can
find out more about GNUstep?
3.3 How do I load and unload bundles while talksoup is running?
3.4 Is order important on the input/output filters?
3.5 How do I do logging?
===============================================================================
1. Overview
1.1 What is GNUstep? Where do I get it?
"GNUstep provides an Object-Oriented application development framework and
tool set for use on a wide variety of computer platforms. GNUstep is
based on the original OpenStep specification provided by NeXT, Inc. (now
Apple)." [www.gnustep.org]
What does that mean in English? Well, GNUstep tries to follow the OpenStep
API. The OpenStep API is really easy to develop applications with in
Objective-C, and it is the same base API used in Cocoa on the Mac OSX
operating system.
The best place to obtain GNUstep is from its website at
http://www.gnustep.org. It may take a while to compile, but other than
that the installation process is fairly straight forward if you read
the instructions.
1.2 What is so special about TalkSoup?
Well, besides being the only IRC client that I know of developed
specifically to be used with GNUstep, it is also one of the most
flexible IRC clients in existence! TalkSoup at its core does almost
nothing except load bundles and allow them to interface between each
other. You can have multiple output plugins or multiple input
plugins. For example, you could have a ncurses based output, or a
GNUstep based output, or even a GTK or QT based output. Also, there
also can be multiple input/output filters. For example, I could write
a filter that sends a fortune to the channel everytime you type
fortune, and it would be completely independent of the output plugin.
So if you wrote this 'fortune' output filter, it would work with the
ncurses output plugin as well as the QT or GNUstep output plugin.
1.3 What is a bundle? A filter? A plug-in?
Throughout the source as well as the documentation for TalkSoup,
these terms are used fairly interchangeably. A plug-in, or bundle
is simply something that you can load into TalkSoup to extend its'
code at runtime. This is helpful because these plug-ins can
be loaded and unloaded and dynamically added to TalkSoup. So,
for example, you could find a plug-in (or bundle or filter) made
for TalkSoup out on the interweb, compile it, and load it straight
into TalkSoup while it's still running!
2. Installation
2.1 How do I install TalkSoup as a regular user?
To install any correctly written GNUstep program as a regular user, it
should just require:
export GNUSTEP_INSTALLATION_DIR="$GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT"
make
make install
which will install GNUstep into your $HOME/GNUstep directory.
2.2 I get messages about it not being able to find bundles. What's wrong?
TalkSoup's core does almost nothing. You need bundles (GNUstep's version
of plugins) to make it do anything. There's a good chance that you may
have just installed the core TalkSoup. When you run compile TalkSoup,
you must do so from the head directory. For example,
andy ~/TalkSoup $ make ; make install
Do not do something like:
andy ~/TalkSoup/Source $ make ; make install
or it will not install any of the output or input plugins.
3. Usage
3.1 I'm new to IRC? Where do I start?
You don't need to know a lot of commands to get around on IRC. First of
all, you connect to a server. This can either be done manually by typing:
/server irc.freenode.net
to connect to irc.freenode.net (or you can use another IRC server if you want)
or you can use the server list to connect to a freenode server.
To change your nickname on the IRC server, you can use:
/nick newname
to change it. There can only be one person on a IRC server at a time with a
particular nickname, so you have to pick something unique! Now, you are
connected, hopefully. Now you just need to join a channel that suits your
particular interest. There are lots of channels on IRC, and a lot of times
you can just guess what the channel name will be. For example, to talk about
GNUstep, you can try:
/join #gnustep
Or you can try a wide variety of other channels like #chat, #linux, #russia,
#debian, #irchelp or whatever your interests may be. If you are using the
GNUstep output plugin, you will see a list along the right side of all the
users in a channel along the right side of the window. You can begin
typing to the people in the channel, just press enter when you want to send
your message.
When you are done talking, you can use a command like:
/part #gnustep
to just leave a particular channel. Or, if you want to disconnect and leave
all the channels, you can use:
/quit
As with most IRC clients, the GNUstep output plugin supports tab-completion, so
if you just type /<tab><tab> you should see a list of all the valid commands.
The best thing to do is just to experiment and have fun!
3.2 Wow, this is really cool! Are there any IRC channels where I can find
out more about GNUstep?
If you connect to irc.freenode.net where many open-source projects
have discussion channels, you can join the #gnustep channel. Sometimes
it takes a few minutes for someone to be around, so you might need
to wait a few minutes to get a reply to a question. My nickname
is Beregorn, hope to talk to you there!
3.3 How do I load and unload bundles while TalkSoup is running?
If you are using the GNUstepOutput bundle, you can very simply
run the Bundle Setup from the Info menu. The following procedure
will work on any output bundle:
To see what bundles you currently have loaded, type /loaded. If you
want to load another input or output filter, you can use the /load
command. To load a input filter, type /load in <filtername> and to
load a output filter, type /load out <filtername>. If you leave off
the filtername, TalkSoup will tell you which bundles are available to
load. The /unload command works very similar to the /load command.
If you get everything the way you want it, you can save your bundle
preferences by typing /saveloaded. Also, keep in mind that order is
important.
Due to a deficiency in the Objective-C compiler, the bundles
can NOT be unloaded, they can be merely deactivated. So, if
you update a bundle, don't expect that unloading and then loading
that bundle will get you using the update. You must restart
TalkSoup to use the updated bundle.
3.4 Is order important on the input/output filters?
YES! To illustrate how it can make a difference, here's an
example using the Highlighting and the MessageInTab input filters.
Now, Highlighting highlights a tab when someone talks in it
(and you don't have that tab focused). MessageInTab simply
opens a separate tab for a person when they private message you.
Now, let's say currently when you type /loaded it says:
Input Filters: Highlighting, MessageInTab
Well, you may be wondering why the tab doesn't turn red when someone
private messages you and the new tab is opened. Well, that's because
TalkSoup goes through the filters in order! First the
Highlighting will run, but at that point, there is no open tab
for that person, so no highlighting will be done. Now, if you type:
/load in Highlighting
And then type /loaded again, you should have something like:
Input Filters: MessageInTab, Highlighting
Now it should work correctly, because when the private message
gets to the Highlighting, it will see that there is a tab
open and will highlight it.
In short, order is important!
3.5 How do I do logging?
Ok, first of all, load the logging bundle:
/load in Logging
Then, the logging bundle is used very simply by
/logging <file>
It will log everything into the file you specify. To turn
off logging, just type:
/logging
Now, this logging support will only last for that connection.
If you disconnect and reconnect, the logging will be turned
off. To make it persistent, create a entry in the server
list and add /logging <file> to the connection commands.
Then the command will be ran everytime you connect.
===============================================================================
Copyright (C) 2005 by Andy Ruder <aeruder@ksu.edu>
|
