                 The Internet Relay Chat Program  -  IRC

                      Author: Jeff Trim, April '89
              Revised: Greg Lindahl, Oct '90 (gl8f@virginia.edu)
	     Re-Revised: Helen Rose, March '94 (hrose@kei.com)

Have you ever wanted to talk with computer users in other parts of the
world?  Well guess what?  You can!  The network is called IRC and it is
networked much over North America, Europe, and Asia, Oceania, and parts of
Africa.  This program is a substitution for talk(1), ytalk(1) and many
other multiple talk programs you might have read about.  When you are
talking in IRC, everything you type will instantly be transmitted around
the world to other users that might be watching their terminals at the
time - they can then type something and RESPOND to your messages - and
vise versa.  I should warn you that the program can be very addictive once
you begin to make friends and contacts on IRC ;-) especially when you
learn how to cuss in 14 languages.

Topics of discussion on IRC are varied, just like the topics of Usenet
newsgroups are varied. Technical and political discussions are popular,
especially when world events are in progress. IRC is also a way to expand
your horizons, as people from many countries and cultures are on, 24 hours
a day. Most conversations are in English, but there are always places to
chat in German, Japanese, and Finnish, and occasionally other languages.

                       How To Get IRC (technical)

IRC is a fully-distributed client-server system, much like
NNTP-Usenet, with several clients availble in C and elisp. You may ftp
documentation and clients from any of the following sites:

many kinds of clients (C, elisp, X11, VMS, REXX for VM, MSDOS, Macintosh):
cs.bu.edu:/irc/clients
ftp.acsu.buffalo.edu:/pub/irc
ftp.funet.fi:/pub/unix/irc
coombs.anu.edu.au:/pub/irc

If you have any questions about IRC installation, write to hrose@kei.com.

