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Overview

The structure of this walkthrough, as with all of them, matches that of the IRC guide, providing more detailed information for the client in question. You may wish to consult with the glossary in the IRC guide for explanations of terminology not covered directly in the guide.

Getting Started with AthenaIRC

Availability: AthenaIRC is available for both Mac OS classic and X. This tutorial should apply to both versions.

When you launch AthenaIRC for the first time, you will be presented with the Connection Setup Assistant, which will walk you through the process of setting up the program to connect to SlashNET. AthenaIRC doesn’t have any preset IRC network configurations, you will need to create one for SlashNET, using the Setup Assistant. Some pointers: On the first page, name the connection SlashNET, for convenience. On page two, you will need to be careful when putting in the server information so as not to disturb the colon and port number (6667) in the server box, for example:

Server settings for irc.slashnet.org

Ignore the Server Presets part of the window. When it comes to entering in the login actions, you will want to put in something like the following to join to your favourite channels when you connect:

Once all the information is entered, and you have dismissed the Setup Assistant, click the Connect button on the top toolbar. Lots of information will show up in the Console window during the connection process, and when you are connected, the Console status bar will tell you so.

Using AthenaIRC

Getting accustomed to AthenaIRC

Once you are connected, windows for any channels that elected to join on connect will open, such as:

The status bar of each window shows the channel topic on the left, and the person who set the topic on the right, in bold text. To the right of that is the channel mode display – for #joyoftech, it will show T N (topic locked, and no outside messages). Each open channel will have its name on the channel bar, which is the second toolbar on the screen, thus:

When text has been received in channels that are not frontmost, the channel names will light up in red.

Command equivalents

You can join a channel using either the Join item on the Connection menu or the Join button on the top toolbar. For other actions relating to people in the channel, control-click or right-click on the user’s name in the userlist:

Tips and tricks

Inputline history: Like with most IRC clients, pressing up and down in the inputline lets you browse through all text entered to the channel so far. Because up and down are also used for beginning and end of line on a Mac, this might pose a nuisance. You can require the option key be held down to browse the history by checking the ‘Require Option key to scroll input history’ setting in the General preferences.

Miniconnections: Miniconnections in AthenaIRC integrate the console, channelbar, and all of your channel and private chat windows into a single window; some people prefer to work this way instead of having lots of open windows. They are, though, a paid feature of AthenaIRC.

An AthenaIRC miniconnection window

To use miniconnection mode, either click the miniconnection button on the toolbar:

or select SlashNET from the New Connection submenu of the File menu. Once you get the miniconnection window open, click the Connect button in the miniconnection window. Please note that the Connect and Disconnect buttons on the top toolbar do not apply to the miniconnection window, although the Connection menu Connect and Disconnect items do.

uilleann, 22nd June 2003