updated

git-svn-id: http://svn.irssi.org/repos/irssi/trunk@1375 dbcabf3a-b0e7-0310-adc4-f8d773084564

README

@@ -1,66 +1,102 @@
 
 
-irssi
+irssi, http://irssi.org
 
-(ok, this file is out of date, there is no gtk version currently)
-(read docs/startup-HOWTO.txt - it will help you get started)
+
+ * FILES
+
+ - docs/ directory contains several documents:
+    - startup-HOWTO.txt - new users should read this
+    - manual.txt - manual I started writing but didn't get it finished :)
+    - perl.txt - Perl scripting help
+    - formats.txt - How to use colors, etc. with irssi
+    - faq.txt - Frequently Asked Questions
+    - special_vars.txt - some predefined $variables you can use with irssi
 
 
  * ABOUT
 
-Irssi is an IRC client made with GTK+ toolkit and (optional) GNOME
-libraries. A small text mode version is also somewhat working, there's
-also a really simple daemon version which just loads "bot" plugin. I'd
-also like to see KDE version.
+Irssi is a modular IRC client that currently has only text mode user
+interface, but 80-90% of the code isn't text mode specific, so other
+UIs could be created pretty easily. Also, Irssi isn't really even IRC
+specific anymore, there's already a working SILC (http://www.silcnet.org)
+module available. Support for other protocols like ICQ could be created
+some day too.
 
 
  * FEATURES
 
-docs/manual.txt - new manual
-docs/perl.txt - some documentation of Perl scripting
+So what's so great about Irssi? Here's a list of some features I can
+think of currently:
 
-I've been asked quite a lot about why should one use irssi, what does it do
-that other IRC clients don't? Well, to tell you the truth, I have no idea :)
-Still I've got a lot of mails saying it's the best GUI IRC client they've
-ever used :) Let's see.. It should be easy to use, it has most of the
-features IRC client needs and it's pretty stable. Here's a small list of what
-it does:
+ - Optional automation - There's lots of things Irssi does for you
+   automatically that some people like and others just hate. Things like:
+   nick completion, creating new window for newly joined channel, creating
+   queries when msgs/notices are received or when you send a msg, closing
+   queries when it's been idle for some time, etc.
 
- - You can connect to multiple servers. Irssi is also IRC network aware so
-   you can specify some settings to work only in specified IRC networks.
- - Automatically connect to IRC server(s) at startup, automatically join to
-   channels when connected.
- - All code is nonblocking, it won't hang while connecting to server or
-   opening DCC connection. Host lookups are done in separate processes.
- - DCC send, receive and chat with GUI
- - GNOME panel support, channels and queries are displayed in GNOME panel
-   where you can easily see which channels have been updated (label turns to
-   red) and click in them to open the channel.
- - Doubleclicking URL in text widget launches specified web/ftp/email client,
-   also doubleclicking channel/nick join to channel or creates query.
- - Aliases, ignores, autoignoring when flooding, notify lists, completing
-   specified words with tab (like home<tab> -> http://my.home.page),
-   hilighting lines with specified texts
- - Smart nick completion
- - Configurable logging support
- - Plugins support, creating plugins is really easy.
- - Extremely flexible Perl scripting support.
- - Lots of nice GUI stuff :)
+ - Multiserver friendy - I think Irssi has clearly the best support
+   for handling multiple server connections. You can have as many as you
+   want in as many ircnets as you want. Having several connections in one
+   server works too, for example when you hit the (ircnet's) 10
+   channels/connection limit you can just create another connection and
+   you hardly notice it. If connection to server is lost, Irssi tries to
+   connect back until it's successful. Also channels you were joined
+   before disconnection are restored, even if they're "temporarily
+   unavailable" because of netsplits, Irssi keeps rejoining back to them.
+   Also worth noticing - there's not that stupid "server is bound to this
+   window, if this window gets closed the connection closes" thing that
+   ircII based clients have.
 
+ - Channel automation - You can specify what channels to join to
+   immediately after connected to some server or IRC network. After joined
+   to channel, Irssi can automatically request ops for you (or do
+   anything, actually) from channel's bots.
 
- * PROXY PLUGIN
+ - Window content saving - Say /LAYOUT SAVE when you've put all the
+   channels and queries to their correct place, and after restarting
+   Irssi, the channels will be joined back into windows where they were
+   saved.
 
-Usage:
+ - Tab completing anything - You can complete lots of things with tab:
+   nicks, commands, command -options, file names, settings, text format
+   names, channels and server names. There's also an excellent /msg
+   completion that works transparently with multiple IRC networks.
+   Completing channel nicks is also pretty intelligent, it first goes
+   through the people who have talked to you recently, then the people who
+   have talked to anyone recently and only then it fallbacks to rest of
+   the nicks. You can also complete a set of words you've specified, for
+   example homepage<tab> changes it to your actual home page URL.
 
-Start irssi-text in screen,
-connect to some irc server
-/load proxy <password> [ip address to listen [port to listen]]
+ - Excellent logging - You can log any way you want and as easily or
+   hard as you want. With autologging Irssi logs everything to specified
+   directory, one file per channel/nick. ircII style /WINDOW LOG ON is
+   also supported. There's also the "hard way" of logging - /LOG command
+   which lets you specify exactly what you wish to log and where. Log
+   rotating is supported with all the different logging methods, you can
+   specify how often you want it to rotate and what kind of time stamp to
+   use.
 
+ - Excellent ignoring - You can most probably ignore anything any way
+   you want. Nick masks, words, regular expressions. You can add
+   exceptions to ignores. You can ignore other people's replies in
+   channels to nicks you have ignored. You can also specify that the
+   specific ignores work only in specific channel(s).
+
+ - Lastlog and scrollback handling - /LASTLOG command has some new
+   features: -new option checks only lines that came since you last did
+   /LASTLOG command, -away option checks new lines since you last went
+   away. Regular expression matches work also, of course. Going to some
+   wanted place at scrollback has always been hard with non-GUI clients. A
+   search command that jumps around in scrollback in GUI-style is still
+   missing from Irssi, but there's something that's almost as good as it.
+   /LASTLOG always shows timestamps when the line was printed, even if you
+   didn't have timestamps on. Now doing /SB GOTO <timestamp> jumps
+   directly to the position in scrollback you wanted. Great feature when
+   you want to browse a bit of the discussion what happened when someone
+   said your name (as seen in awaylog) or topic was changed (/last
+   -topics)
 
-Finished, default port to listen in is 2777 and default ip is the ip
-where your irc server is connected. Now just connect your clients to
-the proxy. There's not much features yet, if you want to use multiple
-servers you'll need to start multiple irssi-texts now..
 
  * BUGS / SUGGESTIONS
 
@@ -69,4 +105,7 @@ See TODO file if it is already listed in there - if not send me email..
 
  * AUTHOR
 
-Timo Sirainen, tss@iki.fi, cras/ircnet, efnet, opn/#irssi, http://irssi.org
+ - Timo Sirainen
+ - tss@iki.fi
+ - cras@ircnet/efnet/opn/silc
+ - #irssi@ircnet/opn