Documentation
About LostIRC
Many people I have talked to, has wondered - why write another IRC
application when there are already so many good ones? And they are
absolutely right; From a sensible perspective, it's silly to compete with
other IRC clients and reinvent the wheel, when you could be contributing
to them instead.
LostIRC was in its early days, written as an educational project to create
and design a medium-sized C++ application. Now, when that goal has been
reached, it's just plain hobby and fun to maintain and enhance the
application further.
Initially developped by Morten Brix Pedersen <morten at mbrix dot dk>
Main features
- Simple and minimal - the client doesn't try to satisfy the needs
of 99% of the globe, this means that the client almost exclusively has
"nice" features, compared to many other clients which can be considered
bloated to some extent.
- Keyboard controlled - you can use the mouse if you want to, but
you are also free to keep your fingers at the keyboard and control
everything from there. Sometimes it's actually faster.
- Tab-completion - both nicks and IRC-commands can be
autocompleted when using the TAB key. This can speed up your typing quite a
bit, especially if you are talking to people with a complicated or lengthy
nick.
to /JOIN etc.)
- Multiple server support - The client can in theory connect to an
unlimited number of IRC-servers at once. When getting disconnected from a
server, LostIRC automatically reconnects and joins the channels that you
were previously on.
- Automatic joining of servers and channels - In LostIRC's
preferences, you can setup exactly which servers you want to connect to
when starting LostIRC. You can also specify exactly which commands that
should be executed on connect, e.g. you could put /JOIN #foo,#bar to join
#foo and #bar.
- Logging - Again in Preferences, you can set up LostIRC to log
data from your LostIRC sessions to a file.
- DCC SEND support - While this feature hasn't been perfected yet,
LostIRC supports both receiving and sending of files using the DCC
protocol.
Currently, LostIRC runs on open source operating systems such as Linux and
*BSD, but the code is written with portability in mind, so porting to other
operating systems is still an open option for anyone who wants to do it.
You can use LostIRC very intuitively. But there are some feature to explain
a little bit more.
Auto-Connect
In
"View -> Server List" (or per
Strg + S) you can
add servers you want to connect to automatically.
If you want to auto-login into
irc.freenode.net / #lostirc for example:
Click on
"Add":
- Hostname: irc.freenode.de
- Port: 6667
- Password: (Keep empty in this case!)
- Nickname: Your name
If you activate
"Connect automatically" LostIRC will connect to
this server at the start of the program.
If you want to join a channel add the following text into the box below
"Commands to perform when connected":
/join #lostirc
You can add further IRC commands (one command per line) if you like. So if you want to identify on freenode:
/nick NICKNAME
/msg nickserv identify PASSWORT
If you're finished hit
"OK" and with a click on
"Connect" you can connect to the server. The list of servers show all server entries you have given so far.
Note: you could use the following command in a console to avoid
auto-connection on start:
lostirc --noauto
Own color definition
LostIRC only supports to color themes at this time.
"Black on white"
and
"White on Black". You can switch them in
"View -> Settings -> Colours".
Changes will only apply to new tabs.
To create own color definitions choose
"Black on white" and close LostIRC.
It's important that you close it otherwise the program will overwrite your changes
at exit.
Now go to the hidden folder
.lostirc in your home directory
and open the file
colors2.conf. You see 21 color definitions
in
hex format (like on HTML pages).
Important: Only change the color codes and add nothing else.
It's forbidden to add spaces at the end of a line or other characters. It's not allowed
to add more lines - even empty ones. Otherwise your changes will be overwritten!
| Color Code | Explanation |
| bgcolor = #FFFFFF | window background |
| color0 = #000000 | text |
| color1 = #FFFFFF | text background |
| color10 = #00CCCC | |
| color11 = #33DDEE | IRC server names and ports |
| color12 = #0000FF | |
| color13 = #EE22EE | |
| color14 = #777777 | |
| color15 = #999999 | |
| color16 = #BEBEBE | connecting, leaving, statistics |
| color17 = #000000 | |
| color18 = #FFFFFF | |
| color19 = #000000 | |
| color2 = #0000CC | brackets around other user names |
| color3 = #00CC00 | IP adresses |
| color4 = #DD0000 | |
| color5 = #AA0000 | |
| color6 = #BB00BB | |
| color7 = #FFAA00 | server messages and brackets around own name |
| color8 = #EEDD22 | color of nicknames with ping |
| color9 = #33DE55 | message when leaving channel |
Other settings
You can change some settings in
"View -> Settings -> Preferences":
- "Nick-completition character" - This char will be attached to a nickname if you hit the tab key.
- "Words to highlight on" - A list of words, separated by spaces you want to be highlight on (ping).
- "Maximum number of lines to cache" - Number of lines shown from current conversation.
- "Log conversations to disk" - Save log files of all channels to .lostirc/logs.
Feedback
If you have any problems with LostIRC, then please contact me via e-mail
regarding the problem, all feedback (even critism to some degree) is appreciated.
If you are sure that a bug exists, then please use the
Sourceforge tracking system to report it.
Finally, there's also an IRC channel for LostIRC on
irc.freenode.net
with the surprising name,
#lostirc.