Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 01:05:15 -0400 From: Visually Impaired Pittsburgh Area Computer Enthusiasts! Subject: EDU: Quick guide to irc and #blindtalk Jim V. provides this FAQ from the blindtalk homepage. Q: How do I get onto #BlindTalk? A: In order to join irc and get onto #BlindTalk you must have two things: 1. an Internet Service Provider, and 2. an IRC chat client. Depending on the type of connection your internet service provider provides to you will determine what kind of IRC client you will use and if you will be able to connect to IRC at all. Quick tip: If you use speech set your punctuation announcement to some or none when using IRC this will save you a lot of headaches. If you have a shell account, meaning you connect to your ISP through a terminal program such as COMO, Terminate, etc. your ISP provides all the internet applications that allow you to access the internet. Your ISP will need to provide the IRC client. If your ISP has one it will usually be called irc (the lower case is important). In most cases these clients are defaulted to connect to the EFnet irc network and use your login name as a nickname (for example if your login is buddy the irc client will use buddy as your nickname). In order to tell your irc client to connect to DALnet you must tell the irc client to connect to a DALnet server, here's how to do it, type the following at your ISP's UNIX prompt (usually $ or %) irc NickName irc.dal.net changing NickName to a nickname of your choice. NOTE: DALnet has a feature which allows people to register nicknames and channels. This feature allows people to be assured that their nickname will be available for their use and that only they can use them. If when you get connected to DALnet you receive a message that says "This NickName is owned by someone else, Please choose another." change your nickname to something different by typing /nick NewNick with NewNick being another nick. If you want a nick that someone else has already registered you can make small changes to your nick by adding a dash or other character to make a unique nickname of your own. To find out more about DALnet's special services visit their web page at http://www.dal.net. Now that you are (hopefully) connected we'll explore some basic commands for using the IRC network. IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat, it is a chat system that allows people to communicate in real time. In order to organize things a bit IRC has been divided into "channels" that you must join in order to chat with people. IRC uses nicknames to identify people, this is why you had to select one in order to connect to IRC. Many people describe IRC as being very much like a CB radio. All irc commands are preceeded by a forward slash, this is so the program knows that this is a command so just text that is to be sent to the currently active channel. Channels can be named almost anything and be on any topic. All channel names either start with a number sign # or plus sign +. The number sign indicates a channel that is network wide, this is how 99% of channels are setup. The plus sign channels are channels which only appear on one server and are not commonly used. Thus #BlindTalk is the name of a network wide channel for blind people to go and talk! So let's get you on the channel, in order to join a chat channel you use the command /join with the channel name, so to join #BlindTalk you would type /join #Blindtalk The IRC client will then report you have joined channel #Blindtalk and give you a list of other people that may be in the channel, after that you will see the conversation that is going on. You talk by simply typing a line of text and press return. Congratulations! You are on IRC! Here are some additional commands that you will need: * /leave Leaves the current channel but does not quit IRC * /Quit (message) This will totally quit from IRC, if you type a message after /quit it will be displayed as part of your quit message * /server (servername) (port) This will allow you to change to a different server you replace (servername) with a valid server name and (port) with a port number (you don't have to include a port number if you don't want to or know what to put there) * /msg (nick) (message) This command will send a private message to a particular nickname, these messages will only be sent to the person you specify. * There is a plethera of additional commands with time you will learn to use many other commands, these are just to help you get started. If you are using a shell account and don't have access to an IRC client, you can either ask your ISP to place one online, or if they don't want to do this you can sometimes compile your own IRC client. For information on how to do this visit some of the IRC newsgroups and ask around. If you have a direct connection to the internet or are using a PPP or Slip connect to the internet you will need to setup and configure an IRC client on your own computer, how this is done will depend on the type of computer you have. If you are using windows here are some good IRC clients, IRC II for Windows, mIRC, and pIRCh. If you have a Macintosh some good IRC clients are IRCle, and Homer. Setup and configuration of these clients will vary. They should all have installation instructions that will help you get started. Most of the above information for the shell account also applies to general usage of any IRC client. I hope this information is of some use in getting you started, if you have any additional questions feel free to email me at unicorn@holly.ColoState.EDU if you need help or additional