Geek Culture IRC client walkthrough: Snak	Site home | Geek Culture
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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 Snak

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

When you launch Snak for the first time, you will be presented with the Snak Setup Assistant, which takes you through the process of setting up the program. You will first be asked to select a nickname and alternative nickname:

Setting up user info

You are then given the option of providing IRC network information:

Setting up network info

Because SlashNET is not one of the predefined IRC networks in Snak, you will need to provide this information. You can also enter a channel name to join on start-up; you can add more later on if you want to have Snak join more than one channel at start-up. When you have finished, you will be presented with the Join dialog box. If you elected to have Snak auto-connect to the network, then it will connect in the background.

The Join dialog

The Join dialog is a bit unusual. It presents a list of preset channels to join, and you can add and remove channels from this list. You can add your own favourite channels to it and then use it to rejoin channels at start-up, although it feels intrusive and you may wish to use the Profile system for storing favourite channels (see later). Bear in mind that the program automatically rejoins any channels that you were in when you last exited the client.

To join channels using this dialog, just highlight them in the list and click Join. If you elect not to have the dialog return on start-up, you can bring it back using the Join item in in the File menu. Click Cancel if you don’t want to join any channels from the list.

If you told Snak to automatically connect at start-up, then you will automatically find yourself logged in, and sat in the channel of your choice if you specified one earlier. In either case, you will see a window called Profile List:

The profiles list

A profile in Snak refers to the settings for a particular IRC network; the Setup Assistant will have created one for SlashNET for you from the details that you provided. If you want to make any changes to SlashNET settings, you can do it here (select SlashNET and click Edit), such as add extra channels to join on connect, or to select whether to connect to SlashNET on startup.

Note that the list of /join commands, which go under Startup actions (these are the on-connect commands), are separated by pressing return – if you wish to add one or more extra ones, press return to start a new line for each. Also note that you can shorten /join to just /j.

If you are not already connected to SlashNET (if you did not select to have Snak connect to SlashNET automatically), you can select the SlashNET profile and click Connect to do so. You can also select Connect To from the File menu and choose SlashNET. Note that the window itself is mistitled, as the title actually merely reflects which tab in the window is selected, not merely the Profile List.

Using Snak

Getting accustomed to Snak

Once you are connected, you will see the SlashNET window, which will look something rather like:

SlashNET

The tabs at the top let you select between all the console (shown with the server name) and all channels on the network; the tab text colour changes to indicate changes in unselected channels, as shown below – red for new messages from people, and blue for other activity, such as people joining and leaving the channel. Below the tabs is the count of people in the channel (the population) and the current topic for the channel. For anyone curious, ‘nt’ above the userlist is the channel mode status (no outside messages, and topic locked) – you will not need to worry about this.

New text in #aftery2k, and other activity in #rfc

Command equivalents

Under the userlist in the channel window, there are five buttons which will act on a selected user, allowing you do to do a Whois, Msg and Query, Kick and a greeting (to see the Greet button, drag the pane divider up a bit). The Msg button is different from the other four in that it requires that you type the message into the inputline first, before being clicked. The Kick button (to kick the user out of the channel) should not be highlighted or even present, though, as it only applies to channel operators, and unless you create a channel of your own, the IRC server will not permit you to use it.

Other command shortcuts will be found under the Tools menu, although the Join dialog will be found under the File menu, along with several other options. The Tools menu is pretty overwhelming-looking, though, so you might want to stick to the commands in the guide for now. Note that Away is found under the Other submenu of Tools, which is a bit unhelpful. It is possible to completely customise the Tools menu, userlist buttons and all contextual menus using Tools > Customise though.

Hints, 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 Message history requires option key with up/down arrow setting in the General preferences.

Private messages: Note that incoming private messages appear within the normal channel text – Snak does not automatically open a query window for such messages, and you will need to open one yourself with the Query button or /query command. Alternatively, check the Open Query window on private msg option from the General preferences, which does it for you.

Screen layout: Snak features an innovative system for configuring the layout of the screen. By default, the SlashNET console and all channel windows appear as tabs in the window, which you can click on to select. However, if you drag any of these tabs to anywhere on the screen, that tab separates out and becomes a window of its own at that location. You can also relocate the current window or page by dragging the informative text that appears at the top of the window. If you start a drag, and drop it on top of a tab bar or the informative text, it will dock the window or page being dragged into the target window. Some experimentation is needed to fully appreciate this facility, however.

uilleann, 21st June 2004