File: README

package info (click to toggle)
xconvers 0.8.1
  • links: PTS
  • area: main
  • in suites: woody
  • size: 1,164 kB
  • ctags: 930
  • sloc: ansic: 6,018; sh: 3,502; makefile: 319; yacc: 318
file content (24 lines) | stat: -rw-r--r-- 1,402 bytes parent folder | download
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
xconvers by Joop Stakenborg <pa4tu@amsat.org>
---------------------------------------------

Xconvers is a client for convers, a IRC-like conversation system for hamradio
operators. Convers differs from IRC because there is a much smaller command set
and command input and output is generally shorter. This is done because a lot
of convers servers are linked by radio waves, where traffic should be kept low.

This program originally started as a motif application, which I started
maintaining when Guido Vattrodt, the original author, dropped it. The work I
have done on the old version involved small additions and bugfixes. The last
available motif version was 0.4.2.

I wanted to enhance xconvers, but found motif programming hard. Good books and
tutorials are hard to find and the code looked too complicated to me. Then I
came across GTK, the Gimp Toolkit. This library has good documentation and its
widgets look good. Programming in GTK proved to be a lot easier. The really hard
part I had to understand was socket programming. I soon discovered that porting
xconvers to GTK would be too difficult, so I decided to write it from scratch.
After finding out about glade (http://glade.gnome.org), a user interface builder
for GTK, designing the UI proved to be rather easy!

Thanks for all the people who have tested this software. I hang around on
channel 44 on the worldwide convers sometimes.