Winsock IRC Version 3.1 Released in 24-03-96. Copyrighted by Alex Fung 1995,1996. All rights reserved. ------------------------------------------------------------- What's new in the version 3.1 1. Support identd, now you can use WIRC to connect some IRC servers required identd such as irc.eskimo.com. 2. Fix the problem of the 'Cannot Insert Line' GPF of the channel list when there are more than 2000 channels. Now the channels are divided into 4 pages. 3. The INI file are currently moved to the working directory instead of Windows directory. So for a single PC, each user can have his/her own customization by different directories of WIRC. I lost the latest source file of the help file. So I keep using the help file of WIRC 3.0. Anyway, there is not many changes. I hope I can re-engineer the source file. What's next ? I am now porting the WIRC 3.1 to Windows 95 using Delphi 2.0. And I will try to build some Windows 95 features there. By the way, I am very busy in these days, so I do not have many spare time to work on WIRC. I will try my best to enhance it. ------------------------------------------------------------- This is a fixed version 3.0. It fixed the following bugs: 1. GPF when storing the Channel list in the INI file. Now I store the data in some separate files in the working directory. 2. Add the leave menu item in the Channel List pop-up menu, it is for the user who cannot get the bottom status bar ( since they use large font). There is a known bug when there are too many channels, the Listbox will overflow and GPF of "Out of resource". This is due to the 64K bound of 16-bit version. I hope I can get the Delphi 2.0 or something like Huge listbox to solve this problem. ------------------------------------------------------------- It is released in February 1996. It is written by Fung Sing Chiu, Alex (scfung@hkstar.com) who is living in Hong Kong. It is a user-friendly IRC Client Windows program. The latest version will be available at my home page (http://www.hkstar.com/~scfung). It requires the following : (1) Windows 3.1 or above (2) Internet TCP/IP connection and Winsock Interface The executables, help file, related database and library files may be distributed together freely in an unmodified form and may be used without fee by any individual for non-commercial use, subject to the following terms: Winsock IRC may not be sold or resold, distributed as a part of any commercial package, used in support of a commercial service, or used in any kind of profit-generating activity even if it is being distributed freely, without the permission of the author. You may use Winsock IRC freely if: (1) You are a member of a non-commercial educational institution. (2) You are a home user. (3) You are a member of a non-profit organisation. Otherwise, please leave me Email to notify me and get the approval. For any one who like this program, want any enhancement of this program, or report any bug, please feel free to send me email (scfung@hkstar.com). And I will be very happy to receive your mail and that will greatly encourage me to further enhance this program. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warrenty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. New features in 3.0 ------------------- (1) Support .chat file: Winsock IRC can now be one of your Netscape Helper Application, and you can launch the program, connect the IRC server and join the channel automatically simply by one click on the link under Netscape. If the link is refering to the same IRC server you are connecting to, it will simply launch the current running Winsock IRC, and change the channel directly, without neither logout and login again, nor execute another Winsock IRC. (2) Support URL and Netscape DDE, so it will prompt you to launch the URL when the program detects some URL like "http:", "ftp:", "mailto:", "www.", in the incoming messages. You can turn off this function under the Setting|Preference function. (3) Add the Netscape "Start", "Launch URL", and "Close" function to make Winsock IRC work with Netscape happily. A "Launch URL" button is also added next to the Topic textbox, so if some URL address is included in the topic line, you can launch it with only one click. (4) History Database will store all the connection history in terms of server, port and channel. So you can reference this information in the combo box of the "Connect IRC Server" Dialog. And this greatly simplies your operations to connect your favour servers and channels. Note: For the old version users, the server list in the WSOC_IRC.INI is no longer referenced. To add a new server, you can simply connect to it, and the server entry will be added automatically, and will be shown next time. (5) Channel Database will store the Channel List you retrieved for each server in terms of Channel names and Topics. You will find this function very useful if you have tried to download thousands of the channels each time you login to each server, and know how painful it is. The stored list of each server will be shown automatically after you connected to that server. You can turn off these function, if you want to save your valuable disk space, under the Setting|Preference function. (6) You can now tune the socket buffer size to fit your connection speed. (7) Nickname textbox is provided in the "Private Chat", so that even the user leave the joined channel, you can still chat with him. (8) "NOTIFY/SAY/ACTION" button is improved. The button will be reseted to "SAY" after you use "ACTION" or "NOTIFY" each time. (9) Fixed the bugs in Overlapped Messagebox, GPF, Channels Filtering. (10) Rewrite the Setup program to make the installation easier. Game Project Sample ------------------- I start to develop some games based on the Private Chat with Winsock IRC, using DDE. There will be a sample is a program written in Delphi 1.0. You can feel free to ask me the source code.