IRK README
Welcome to IRK, a Tcl IRC client library. IRK is intended for Tcl programmers that want to use the IRC protocol for communication. It can be used to ease the creation of IRC "bots", as shown by the examples in the examples directory, and it can also serve as the basis for graphical chat clients. Finally, it can be used to allow IRKs to find each other without centralized coordination, by meeting on a designated IRC server and channel. It is therefore ideal for setting up the initial contact for P2P programs without requiring a central registry or server.
LICENSE
IRK is distributed under the BSD license, the same license as Tcl.
INSTALLATION
IRK is written in pure Tcl, which means it requires no extensions. It works with Tcl 8.0 and all later releases of Tcl.
IRK has been tested on Solaris 7, Red Hat Linux 7.2, Windows 98, Windows 2000 and FreeBSD 4.2. It should work on any platform that is able to support Tcl 8.0 or later.
Just drop this directory into one of the directories in Tcl's auto path. In your Tcl scripts, add the line:
package require irk
and the IRK package should load into your Tcl interpreter.
USAGE
Read docs/usage.txt for a short overview of the commands provided by IRK.
RECENT CHANGES AND CURRENT VERSION
Please read docs/changes.txt to see a list of all changes, ordered chronologically by release.
REQUIREMENTS
IRK is event driven, and it requires the event loop to be active. If you want to use IRK from tclsh or other programs embedding a Tcl interpreter where the event loop is inactive, enter the event loop by adding the following line somewhere in your program:
vwait infinitely
If you are using IRK in Wish, you do not need to take any action.
TODO
Please docs/todo.txt for a list of planned enhancements.
CREDITS AND CONTACT
IRK benefited from examination of the Zircon and savIRC code written by Lindsay Marshall and Saverio Castellano, respectively. The future OO wrapper API is based on an idea suggested by Dave N. Welton.
You can contact Jacob Levy, the author of IRK, at jyl@best.com. Please do drop a note if you use IRK, or if you have suggestions for enhancements, or if you run into problems.