rcirc: Internet Relay Chat
1.1 Internet Relay Chat
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“Internet Relay Chat” (IRC) is a form of instant communication over the
Internet. It is mainly designed for group (many-to-many) communication
in discussion forums called channels, but also allows one-to-one
communication.
Contrary to most Instant Messenger (IM) systems, users usually don’t
connect to a central server. Instead, users connect to a random server
in a network, and servers relay messages from one to the next.
Here’s a typical example:
When you connect to the Freenode network (‘http://freenode.net/’),
you point your IRC client at the server ‘irc.freenode.net’. That server
will redirect your client to a random server on the network, such as
‘zelazny.freenode.net’.
Once you’re connected, you can send messages to all other users
connected to the same network, and you can join all channels on the same
network. You might join the ‘#emacs’ and the ‘#rcirc’ channels, for
example. (Typically, channel names begin with a hash character.)
Once you have joined a channel, anything you type will be broadcast
to all the other users on the same channel.
If you want to address someone specifically, for example as an answer
to a question, it is customary to prefix the message with the nick
followed by a colon, like this:
deego: fsbot rules!
Since this is so common, you can use <TAB> to do nick completion.
Info Catalog
rcirc: Basics
rcirc: Getting started with rcirc