HexChat ReadMe

This program is released under the GPL v2 with the additional exemption that compiling, linking, and/or using OpenSSL is allowed. You may provide binary packages linked to the OpenSSL libraries, provided that all other requirements of the GPL are met. See file COPYING for details.

For building instructions, see http://www.hexchat.org/developers/building

What is it?

HexChat is an IRC client for Windows and UNIX operating systems. I.R.C. is Internet Relay Chat, see http://irchelp.org for more information about IRC in general. HexChat runs on most BSD and POSIX compliant operating systems.

Requirements:

GTK+ 2.10
GLib 2.12

HexChat is known to work on, at least:

Windows XP/Vista/7/8
Linux
FreeBSD
OpenBSD
NetBSD
Solaris
AIX
IRIX
DEC/Compaq Tru64 UNIX
HP-UX 10.20 and 11
OS X

Notes for packagers:

If you need your packages to work on i386, you don't need to compile with --disable-mmx, because it's also checked at run-time.

Python Scripts:

Scripts for XChat 1.8.x are not compatible, a brand new interface has been written. The documentation can be found here:

https://github.com/hexchat/hexchat/wiki/Python-Interface

Consider using the Python interface for your scripts, it's a very nice API, allows for loading/unloading individual scripts, and gives you almost all the features of the C-Plugin API.

Perl Scripts:

Perl 5.8 or newer is required. The documentation can be found here:

https://github.com/hexchat/hexchat/wiki/Perl-Interface

Scripts for XChat 1.8.x are compatible with the following exceptions:

IRC::command will not interpret %C, %B, %U etc.
user_list and user_list_short: If a user has both op and voice, only the op flag will be 1.
add_user_list/sub_user_list/clear_user_list These functions do nothing.
notify_list Not implemented. Always returns an empty list.
server_list Lists servers that are not connected aswell.
Some print events may have new names and some were added.
Text printed by scripts must now be UTF8.
Text passed to scripts (via add_message_handler) will be encoded in UTF8.

Autoloading Scripts and Plugins:

The root of your HexChat config is:

Windows: %APPDATA%\HexChat
Unix: ~/.config/hexchat

Referred to as < config > from now. HexChat automatically loads, at startup:

< config >/addons/*.lua Lua scripts
< config >/addons/*.pl Perl scripts
< config >/addons/*.py Python scripts
< config >/addons/*.tcl Tcl scripts
< config >/addons/*.dll Plugins (Windows)
< config >/addons/*.so Plugins (Unix)

Control Codes:

%% - A single percentage sign
%C - Control-C (mIRC color code)
%B - Bold Text
%U - Underline Text
%R - Reverse Text
%O - Reset all Text attributes
%XXX - ASCII XXX (where XXX is a decimal 3 digit number, e.g.: %007 sends a BEEP)

%Cforeground,background will produce a color code, e.g.: %C03,10

These are now disabled by default (see Settings > Preferences > Input Box).
Instead you can insert the real codes via ctrl-k, ctrl-b and ctrl-o.

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