Last updated on 15-May-1997
Hopefully by now, you have finished the assignments in LESSON 1 and have already had your first taste of GLOBAL IRC. Some of you may still be there.
I will now tell you how you can develop your IRC skills.
Using IRC in a WINDOWS environment is much easier than trying to use it in a non-WINDOWS environment like UNIX.
First of all, a window opens up for every different communication purpose.
The first window you see, when you connect, is the "status window". This window provides different types of information about what is going on during your IRC session. Some of the commands you will be giving later will send their output to this window. Note that if you are not working in a WINDOWS environment, all of the IRC output is goes onto one screen.When you first join a channel, a new window opens up for this channel. On the larger, left-hand side you see everything that is being written. On the right-hand side there is a scroll-bar with the names of all of the nicknames on this channel.
If you join another channel, another window will open up. You can be connected to many different channels at the same time. (If you do this in a non-WINDOWS environment, this can prove quite confusing, for you will have to follow the conversations from the different channels all on the same screen. You only know where each message is coming from because it has the channel name before the message).
A new window also opens up when you "send a message to someone" or "someone sends a message to you".
You do this with the /msg{nickname}{message} command.
You can then have a private conversation with someone using the new message window which just opened up. I have sometimes seen my students working with about 12 different windows, which they have arranged carefully on their screen, some of them channels and some of them private message windows.mIRC also has a big advantage in that you don't have to remember all of the IRC commands. If you use the pull-down "Command" menu, you will be able to do most of the things that I will provide commands for now.
When "talking" on IRC, you only see a person's nickname. Sometimes you will want to see the "person behind the nickname". You can do this by giving the -
/whois {nickname} command.
This is will you output such as -
/whois sanddune
sanddune is david@194.90.177.90 * David LloydThis information will appear in the "status window" (or on the same screen if you are not in a WINDOWS environment). This is somewhat clumsy at times, going to the status window to get the output to the whois command, so mIRC also has a special command -
/uwho {nickname}
This commands opens up another small window on your screen with the information about the person.You may what to receive this type of information for everyone on the channel you are on. You can get it by giving the following command -
/whois {#channel}Sometimes a person has just left the channel you are on and you want to know more about that person. You then need to use the -
/whowas {nickname} Shows information about someone who -just- left IRC.You may decide to change your own nickname for a number of reasons after you are already on IRC. This happens often when a number of kids are using the same computer and take turns "speaking". They change the nick to their own nick each time it is their turn. You do this by -
/nick {nickname}At times, you may want to leave the conversation for a few moments to get a sandwich, answer the phone, tell your family that you are still alive. You can do this by the following -
/away {away message} Sets you away leave a message explaining that you are not currently available
(i.e. * sanddune is taking the dog for a walk)
/away Sets you being back.Or you may just want to do something over IRC. For instance, a friend arrives and you wave to him/her. /me {action text} /me waves to Sarah
The output appears as -
* sanddune waves to SarahOne of the powerful things you can do on IRC is send files to other people. In the middle of a conversation, someone may ask you what you look like and you tell them that you just happen to have a picture of yourself on your harddisk. You then send them that file over IRC.
/dcc send {nickname} {file1} {file2} {file3} ... {fileN} Sends the specified files to nick.
When you give this command, the other person receives a message that you want to send them a file. They have to accept this request in order for the file to be sent.If you haven't arranged to meet someone on a predetermined channel, you may just want to join a number of different channels and see what's going on there. In order to do so you have to know which channels are available. You do this with the list command. Be careful with this command though for if you write only -
/list
will give you a very long listing of all of the channels available. It is better to confine your listing to a minimum and maximum number of users -
/list [-min #] [-max #]
/list -10 -15 will list only those channels that have between 10 and 15 users on them.
You can also list channels according to a matching string. Thus if you want to find all of the channels that have "sport" in their string, you can give the command -
/list #sport
/list #sport -20 -40 will give all of the channels with "sport" in the string and between 20 to 40 users (i.e. "summersport", "funsport", "sportradio")These are all of the commands that I will teach you in this lesson, except for one more.
When it's time to leave IRC (or the channel) and you don't want to seem rude, you can quit while leaving a message-
/quit [reason] Disconnect you from IRC with the optional byebye message.I will teach you how to create "invite only" channels in a later lesson, and how to invite people to these channels. You can also "ban" and "kick" people off channels.
Your assignment, for this lesson, is to go to GLOBAL IRC and practice these commands.
We will also set up a "private IRC session" for those of you who can make it at 13:00
(1:00 p.m.) on Friday. This IRC session will not be on GLOBAL IRC, but rather on our own FREENET "local IRC". In order to connect to the "lizard.ramat-negev.org.il" server, you will have to tell your IRC program that it exists, because it is not already listed there.There are two ways of doing this:
Hope to see many of you on lizard at 13:00 on Friday. We will meet again on the
- Choose "File", then "Setup" on mIRC. Then choose "Add".
Fill in "lizard" for "Description" and lizard.ramat-negev.org.il for
"IRC Server".
You will then be able to connect to this server.- Give the command -
/server lizard.ramat-negev.org.il
This second option will work for all versions of IRC.
#etni channel.Lesson 3 will be sent out late Saturday night and be waiting for you Sunday morning. I will explore IRC "culture" and "language" in this lesson.