Zircon Release 1.09
-----------------------

This is a release of Zircon, an X11 interface to Internet Relay Chat.
The software is written in tcl/tk and uses the tcl-dp TCP extensions
to provide network communications. Beta testers are asked to provide
comments on the interface that the system provides and to test it
under of a variety of conditions. Please resist the temptation to hack
the code. We will reach a stable, proper release quicker if we can
centralise changes to the program, however suggestions for
improvements in the code will also be welcome. We are particularly
interested in making the system useful for those users in groups where
JIPS and other national character sets are used.

Zircon was implemented as a way of learning tcl/tk and has taken about
10 weeks to get to its current state of development. It has more
features than you could possibly imagine and implements nearly
everything that the irc II clients support as well as many other
useful and interesting features. tcl/tk is a wonderful system and you
need it on your machine *NOW*.

Please send all reports, comments and suggestions to: 

	zircon@catless.newcastle.ac.uk

We can also often be found on channel #GB and will keep open 
a channel #zircon when we are around. N.B. the user whose 
nick is zircon has nothing to do with this progam.

Mail
	zircon-request@newcastle.ac.uk

to be added to the Zircon users mailing list. Messages to the mailing
list should be sent to

	zircon@newcastle.ac.uk

Enjoy!

Jimbles and Lindsay
---------------------

REQUIREMENTS

The software has been developed using:

	tcl	Version 6.7		7.0b3
	tk	Version 3.2		3.3b3
	tcl-dp	Version 1.0ak		2.0

N.B. tcl-dp 2.0 HAS NOT BEEN OFFICIALLY RELEASED YET and so is not
currently available!!!!

You must have the dpwish program rather than the usual wish for zircon
to be runnable.

tcl/tk is available from harbor.ecn.purdue.edu in the directory
/pub/tcl. tcl-dp is available there also, but the latest version can
always be found on catless.ncl.ac.uk which is also the home of zircon.

You can configure lots of stuff using X resources, thus it is possible
to make buttons and text associated with particular users and channels
appear in special colours and fonts. The system is much easier to use
than the usual UNIX interfaces to irc and a lot of people ar eusing it
on a day to day basis.

INSTALLATION

Make sure you have tcl and tk installed and have built tcl-dp.  Edit
the Makefile and configure the path to dpwish, the name of the
directory where zircon files are going to live, and where you want the
main program to go. Then type

	make install

Now create a file called rc in the zircon directory. This acts as a
system wide rc file for all zircon users. Minimally put in here the
name of the default irc server that you wish users to connect to, and
the default port if it is not 6667. Also useful would be the name of
you rnearest irc help service :

set defaultServer x.y.z
set defaultPort 9999
set helpService "help_XX"

The file DOTzirconrc shows you what you might want to put in your
.zirconrc file in your HOME directory, but any of that stuff can also
go in the rc file in the zircon library directory. The HOME rc file
overrides the system one.

You will also want to edit the file zircon.ad which can be found in
the zircon library directory. This contains application defaults for
X resources and is read by zircon on startup. 

HELP

Mail problems to zircon@catless.ncl.ac.uk. The zircon mailing list can
be joined by posting to zircon-request@newcastle.ac.uk and posted to
at zircon@newcastle.ac.uk You can usually find help in the #zircon
channel on IRC as well.



POSSIBLE FUTURE FEATURES

1) Automatic AWAY canceling when you type in a window.

2) Nice icons instead of boring old buttons and text - suggestions welcome.

3) Face icons for users. Probably using the faces mail icon database.

4) Sound

5) Support for extended Server features

KNOWN PROBLEMS

1) Zircon does not work with pre-2.8 servers.

2) SED is not supported. DCC Chat is supported directly within Zircon
but Send and get require binary I/O and are provided using external
programs. Error handling is rudimentary at the moment.

3) There is no JIPS support. In fact there are problems when you even
attempt to join a group with JIPS characters in its name as tcl tries
to interpret the $ characters in them.... I have tried the JIPS
version of tcl but it didnt help.

4) Character escaping in the low level CTCP protocol is not done.

5) There are some weird things that can happen with menu handling and
when connections get closed suddenly. Some of these may be tcl/tk
problems that will go when we move to the new release.
