CujoChat: Internet Chat for Magic Cap!

Chatting basics

To get on IRC, tap the "open link" button in CujoChat's main scene. The modem should dial, the server will send you some informational messages like how many users there are, and then you should be live on a channel. When you first install CujoChat, the channel is set to #magic-cap. Note that channel names always start with a pound sign '#' for historical reasons. You can think of using a channel as being in a room: when you say something to the channel, everyone hears it, and you hear everything that others are saying to the channel.

The following screen shot depicts a sample conversation between "dogman," the CujoChat user, and another user named "flume." Click on the image to get the full-sized screen shot.

Messages from the server, or other informational status messages, are always prepended with "***" so you can quickly tell them apart from stuff that others are saying. When another user says something to the channel, the text is prepended with their nick in less-than and greater-than signs, e.g. "<flume> hello there." Messages that you send to the channel are prepended with a single greater-than sign. To send a message to the channel, type the message into the "you say:" text field and press the "return" key when you are finished. At that point CujoChat will send the message to the channel. If you want to say more than will fit on one line, break your message into multiple lines.

Changing channels

To leave a channel and participate in another, tap the "change channel" button and enter the new channel name. You don't have to type the beginning pound '#' sign if you don't want to; CujoChat will automatically insert it if needed. If the channel is left blank, CujoChat will default to #magic-cap.

Talking to specific users

Immediately beneath the "you say" text field is a choice box labeled "say to" which determines who receives your messages. By default this is set to "entire channel," so whenever you press return in the "you say" field, all users on the channel will hear your message. If you want to talk to a specific user, though, you can set the box to "specific user." All messages sent in this way will only be heard by the other user.

To specify the recipient of your messages, tap the adjacent "user" choice box and pick a nick from the list of users on the channel. Whenever people enter or leave the channel, this list is updated to reflect the current channel state.

Messages sent and received using "specific user" are visibly different from normal channel-wide messages to help you differentiate personal conversations from the normal channel traffic. Messages sent are prepended with "you tell nick:" where "nick" is the other's nickname. Messages received from others using this means are prepended with "nick tells you:". IRC clients on other platforms will also differentiate personal from channel-wide conversation, so this feature is useful for conversations with any other users, not just ones running CujoChat.

Channel and user options

Channel topic and flags

IRC Channels have several attributes besides their name. Every channel has a current topic, for example the topic on #magic-cap might be "vote for your favorite Magic Cap stamps" at some point. The channel topic can be set at any point by a Channel operator. Operators will be discussed in greater detail shortly. To see the current topic, tap the "options" button in CujoChat. The first text field in the resulting window displays the current topic.

Channels can be marked with several flags to change the IRC server's default behavior when stuff happens. You can't change the flags for a channel unless you are a channel operator, but you can always see what the current flags are. CujoChat provides an interface for some of the most common of these: secret, private, and invite-only.

The first flag, secret, prevents the channel from showing up in the master channel lists that other users can browse through. The result is that someone must know the name of the channel to join it, but nothing is done to prevent their entry when they know the name. Many channels set this flag to reduce the amount of random people wandering through.

The private flag on a channel goes much further than secret: it prevents any other users from joining the channel. If you want to converse with a few other specific users and not allow others in, go to a new channel and set the private flag. See more on channel creation below.

The final flag, invite-only, prevents all uninvited users from joining the channel. Inviting users to the current channel will be discussed in the advanced topics section.

"Away" messages

One final field in the options window lets you set an "away" message. If you have to take your attention from CujoChat for a while, but don't want to disconnect and leave the channel, set the "send away msg" check box. If another user sends a message directly to you while the away box is checked, the server will automatically send a reply telling the user that you are away. If you filled in a message in the adjoining text box, this text will also be sent with the message. Keep in mind other users will only get this automatic reply if they send a message directly to you; channel-wide messages are not auto-replied to since that would flood the channel with away messages.

Nifty sounds

By default, CujoChat plays sounds when various events occur on the channel, most commonly people joining and leaving. To turn CujoChat's sounds on or off, tap the Rules button in the Magic Lamp and check the box for your preference.

Disconnecting from IRC

To disconnect your communicator from IRC, tap the "close link" button. The open and close link functions are shared in a single button that toggles its function depending on if the IRC link is up.

Channel creation and operators

Creating and destroying channels

If there are thousands of channels on IRC, how did they all get there? Channels are not fixed entities, but rather are created and destroyed on the fly. If you try to join a channel that does not currently exist, the IRC network of servers will dynamically create one. Well-known channels like #irchelp or #macintosh exist continuously due to the fact one person created the channel, others joined, and since then there have always been a few users around at all times. If all users of a channel leave, the channel is destroyed.

To illustrate this point, say a person named "dogman" changes their channel to #lizard-herding. If #lizard-herding does not exist already with other users there, it will be created and dogman will be the only user on the channel. If another user "flume" joins the channel and dogman leaves, the channel will still exist because flume is there. If flume leaves, the channel will be destroyed. Dogman can always go back to #lizard-herding and the channel will be recreated, but the old topic and channel flags will not carry over; dogman will have to set them again.

Channel operators

When a channel is created, the person that created it is given special "operator" privileges. The channel operator, or just "op," can set the channel topic and change its flags, such as making the channel secret. Ops can also "op" others, that is make other users channel operators. This will be discussed in the advanced topics section. If all of the ops on a channel leave, then nobody can set anything, so everybody must leave and then rejoin. This is a caveat in IRC and not CujoChat specifically. To get around this problem, some channels have "robots" (or just "bots") which are automated programs that constantly stay on a channel and do stuff like op well-known users.

As an aside, bots can make IRC pretty interesting. For example, some bots are programmed to automatically respond to certain keywords and "play human." If you're familiar with the Turing test in artificial intelligence, you'll recognize why some extremely advanced AIs were developed as IRC bots to facilitate real-world conversation testing. Most bots, though, are not very advanced and just do stuff like auto-op other users. Bots will sometimes kick users off a channel, for example when I was testing CujoChat with netcom, I was kicked off a channel because a bot was programmed to auto-kick netcom users off. Every now and then a bot will go nuts, e.g. the programmer messed something up, and the results are pretty funny. On more than one occasion I've seen a bot go berserk and start auto-kicking everyone off a channel as soon as they joined.