IRCe is the new IRC client for Squeak. It is a merge of the original IRC client written by Lex Spoon and Enhanced IRC written by Stephan Wessels.
The IRC package was removed from the base image starting in Squeak version 3.7. To access IRC from within Squeak you will need to download IRCe. See SqueakMap for details on loading packages.
Squeak Versions Supported
IRCe is compatable with Squeak versions 3.7, 3.8, 3.9.
Installation
The IRCe client included in the 3.7 full image contains a bug. It will produce a walkback the first time you start it up. You should load the latest version of IRCe from SqueakMap .
When IRCe is run for the first time the user is asked a few questions to set the default behavior of the client. Intelligent defaults are provided.
Usage
The client installs into the open menu as IRC. Once the client is up you can connect to an IRC server by clicking the connnect button located at the top of the window. Connection information can be checked and or set via the setup button. To attach to a specific channel use the Channels button and either load all the channels available on this server (use the Refresh button) and click on the channel name you want to join then click the Join Selected button or else click the Join Prompth button and enter the channel name.
If you want embedded links to open an external web browser when they are clicked you will need to install the following packages in addition to IRCe:
ExternalWebBrowser (which in turn needs the FFI package.)
Applescript (If you are on a Mac)
Note: The applescript package on SqueakMap, Mac-Applescript, will not load in 3.9. To use applescript in 3.9 you need to get the package Applescript from SqueakSource.
Future Development
Much of the package refactoring has recently begun. Back when I wrote the enhanced IRC client I had a goal of not disturbing the behavior of the existing IRC client as it was written by Lex. This led to many many subclasses and, although both variations of IRC client co-existed, a lot more urgency for refactoring and cleanup of classes resulted. In the past month (June 2004) or so, I'd begun to get back to enhancements, and bug fixes. I also wrote a new unit test suite for the IRC client. This includes an IRC test server that simulates connections and requests. With this latest "wave" of refactorings I reduced classes back down to one set and no longer provide support for the coexsiting original IRC client. My personal web page of Squeak enhancements http://squeak.preeminent.org/ includes the latest updates to these IRC packages. It also is published on SqueakSource and on SqueakMap. - sbw.
