[vtk-developers] IRC boycott?

[Prabhu Ramachandran]

hi,

>>>>> "LA" == Lisa S Avila <lisa.avila at kitware.com> writes:

    LA> I would guess that 10am on a Saturday is not the best
    LA> time. :-) You may want to try a weekday during business hours.

OK, I'll try and fix a convenient time sometime this week.

    LA> Actually, I tried to join in about 10:40 am, (after getting
    LA> home from my daughter's dance class) but having never used irc
    LA> before I was unsure what to do. I went to irc.debian.org with
    LA> my web browser but that put me at some World Trade Center
    LA> tribute site. There was some link up top, but it didn't lead
    LA> anywhere...

As Bill said you need to use a chat client to chat.  Charl Botha told
me that there are tools that let you chat via your browser but I think
its best if a chat client was used.  Its also relatively easy getting
and using a chat client.  Here are some simple instructions on how to
get things working.

 (1) Install a chat client.  I hope installing software is not a big
 problem.

    (a) Under GNU/Linux there are many different chat clients to
    choose from.  Xchat is nice and for now maybe we'll just use that.
    Most of these chat clients should ship with your Linux CD or if
    you use Debian can be obtained via apt-get or whatever.  You can
    also get newer binaries here: http://www.xchat.org/download.html

    (b) If you use Windows visit http://www.xchat.org There are links
    for a windows exe which is an installer for windows.  I've never
    installed it so dont know the specifics but I'm sure it should be
    easy.

    (c) Other platforms: Look at the
    http://www.xchat.org/download.html page you might find precompiled
    binaries for your OS.  If there aren't any you can get the xchat
    sources and compile them.  There is a link on http://www.xchat.org
    that tells you how to compile.

 (2) Once you have installed your chat client you should get familiar
 with chat.  You could  read the following:

    http://irchelp.org/irchelp/new2irc.html

    http://irchelp.org will also have more documentation.
  
 Xchat also has a help menu that you could explore.

 (3) Once you are done with (1) and (2) its time to check it out.
 Just fire up xchat and you will be presented with a server list.
 Select the OpenProjectsNet tree item and expand it.  You should see
 irc.openprojects.net there.  Select it and then click on connect at
 the bottom of the dialog.  You will see a different screen with a
 welcome message of sorts.  Just type '/join #vtk' on that screen
 (without the quotes) and if all went well you should see a new
 notebook tab that says #vtk.  Click on the tab and you will see that
 you are connected to #vtk.  Type any message there and hit enter and
 everyone on the channel at that time (the right panel will show you
 who is online) will see your message.  To leave you either exit the
 client or do a /leave #vtk.

Thats about all there is to it.  More irc commands are available in
the irc docs that I cited earlier.

Let me know if you need any more information.

prabhu