IRC

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a form of instant communication over the Internet. It is used for GnuCash to enable group (many-to-many) communication in a discussion forum, called channel. IRC in itself additionally also allows one-to-one communication.

Prerequisite

You need a program which supports the IRC protocol. Many IRC applications exist. Probably one is on your computer already. If you find one neither on your computer nor on your installation media, you should search the Internet to find one fitting your environment.

• Mibbit is a web-based IRC client.
• Pidgin (multi-platform, IM/messaging client with IRC-protocol support)
• XChat(multi-platform)
• Chatzilla (multi-platform Firefox extension)
• Mozilla Thunderbird (multi-platform email program, multi-protocol chat client added in 2012)

Warning: At least one version of this client has by default strange settings, again and again reconnecting after a few minutes. So please adjust the settings and feel free to report the adjustments here.

• mIRC (Windows)
• Konversation (KDE)
• Kopete (KDE)
• Colloquy (OS X)
• Adium (OS X)

Non ASCII characters

Just in the case you use sometimes non ASCII characters like umlauts or accents, you should set the encoding of your client to UTF-8 instead of e.g. Latin/Hybrid. Otherwise the log files might look ugly.

Usage

Join

Any IRC application first needs to connect to an IRC server. The discussion forum for GnuCash is hosted on the following server and has the following channel name:

server

irc.gnome.org

channel

#gnucash

In many IRC applications you will be asked to specify the server to connect to. Choose irc.gnome.org in that dialog. After that, your IRC application might have a button labeled "Join Channel", in which you can specify to join the #gnucash channel. irc.gnome.org is an alias of irc.gimp.org. So in the Linux application XChat, GimpNet is another name for irc.gnome.org.

Alternatively, you can perform these two steps by entering the following commands at the command prompt of an IRC application:

/server [irc.gnome.org]
/join #gnucash

If your computer had a correct setup of MIME types and applications, all you would have to do is click on: irc://irc.gnome.org/gnucash.

Quit IRC

To quit IRC, just execute:

/quit

Note for information:

Unless you have used Chat programs before it is not very simple or intuitive to use them. I have tried a number of the programs mentioned above and the only one that worked and was relatively easy to use was Mibbit. Once downloaded you click on the chat now button and you get the home screen, you then need to click on server (because the irc.gnome.org server is not on the list) and enter, irc.gnome.org, then choose a nickname to use (this can probably be anything), then enter, #gnucash, in the channel box and then click connect and wait. You should then be connected and can type your question / comment in the box at the bottom and it should appear on the main screen when you press enter, and then wait for an answer. Hope this is helpful.

Public Logging

The discussions in the GnuCash irc channel are logged on a public web page:

• http://lists.gnucash.org/logs

If you want to say something that shouldn't be logged, prepend your text by the prefix [off] which should stand for "off-the-record". Lines that begin with [off] will not show up on the web page logs.

The timestamps in the log pages are given in EST (UTC-5).

How to speak up in the channel

When you join the GnuCash IRC channel, you should speak up. If you have a question, please ask it right away.

But then you should wait. Don't expect an answer right away. Sometimes you'll get an answer within seconds. Other times you might have to wait several hours until one of the core developers wakes up. Please be kind, and please wait in the channel.

Note that many of the active participants in that channel are active only during US daylight time, corresponding to timezones EST (UTC-5), CST (UTC-6), PST (UTC-8). Other participants are active only during Europe daylight time, GMT (UTC+0) and CET (UTC+1).

Use pastebin for longer text and imagebin for screenshots

Sometimes you will be asked to show your console output or a trace file. Please do not use copy&paste in the chat window for this longer texts. Instead call a pastebin like http://pastebin.ca or http://pastebin.com in your web browser, paste the text in the offered input window and push Submit. Then copy the returned link into your chat client to provide it to your chat partners.

If you wish to share a screenshot, use a service like http://imagebin.org.

Further Reading

You can find much information around IRC at irchelp.org.