IRC stands
for "Internet Relay Chat". It was originally written by
Jarkko Oikarinen in 1988. Since starting in Finland, it has been
used in over 60 countries around the world. It was designed as a
replacement for the "talk" program but has become much
much more than that. IRC is a multi-user chat system, where people
convene on "channels" (a virtual place, usually with a
topic of conversation) to talk in groups, or privately. IRC is constantly
evolving, so the way things to work one week may not be the way
they work the next. Read the MOTD (message of the day) every time
you use IRC if you would like to keep up on any new happenings or
server updates. IRC gained international fame during the 1991 Persian
Gulf War, where updates from around the world came across the wire,
and most irc users who were online at the time gathered on a single
channel to hear these reports. IRC had similar uses during the coup
against Boris Yeltsin in September 1993, where IRC users from Moscow
were giving live reports about the unstable situation there.
mIRC is
a shareware IRC client for Windows. It is developed and copyrighted
by Khaled Mardam-Bey. mIRC is a highly configurable IRC client with
all the goodies other clients on UNIX, Macintosh and even on windows
offer, combined with a adiquate user interface. mIRC offers full
color text lines, DCC File Send and Get capabilities, programmable
aliases, a remote commands/events handler, place sensitive
popup menu's, World Wide Web and sound support, and a lot more.
mIRC is shareware but not crippled in any way.
The concept
behind The mIRC Re-Interface Project is to revamp the appearance
of mIRC using mIRC's own built in remote command/event handler.
By applying logic within the handler, it is possible to persuade
the application to preform different tasks based on the input that
it is given. Though using the flexable scripting language allows
nearly anything to become possible, the mIRC Re-Interface Project
focuses on the input/output display translation (please read the
restrictions to learn more).
The point
of organizing such a project is to allow features to be easily implementable
to the novice and advanced user alike. In turn, the users can customize
(hence improve) the version that they download and submit their
variation so that others can have the choice of implementing the
original version OR the version that was customized.
