Spychat 2.3!

Spydisk .5 Beta!

Spychat 2.3 Read-me

Spychat Chat

Thank you for trying Spychat! We hope you'll find Spychat a useful place for help with your Mac and fun chat.

Please let me know if there's anything I can improve on - my e-mail address is scotsupport@spymac.com.

Contents

• System Requirements
• Getting Started
• Advanced Features
• Version History

System Requirements

Spychat has very few minimum system requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.2 or later
• Internet Connection

If you have a firewall, make sure you're able to initiate connections to port 6667.

Getting Started

Ok, so you're ready to head on over to Spychat. To start out, make sure Spychat's open - it should be, since that's how you got to this Read Me file!

If this is the 1st time you've opened Spychat, look for a window that looks something like this:

as you can see from the picture above, you can change your user name and nick name. i recommend you use anything but your real name for your nickname. as far as your username goes, you can put anything you like there, the chat standard is to use your Mac OS X login name, but you can put what ever you want there.

Click OK, and That's it! Just click the Connect button in the upper left hand corner of the chat window, and you're in the room.

To say something, just type in the input field at the bottom of the chat window and press the Return or Enter key.

Have fun and enjoy!

Advanced Features

There are a few advanced features in Spychat that you may want to know about. Most of these settings can be found in the Preferences sheet. Choose the Spychat menu and choose the Preferences… menu item.

There are 3 tabs in the Preferences sheet. we'll cover them one by one.

In the connection tab you'll find 3 sections.

In the name section, Nickname and Username are same options you set when you 1st opened the program. you'll also find a 3rd option, Real Name, you can put just about any info here, though the default is your Real Name. (see get info)

The connection section is pretty strait forward, you choose the server region you want to connect from, and weather or not you want to connect every time you open the program. as far as quit message goes, that is the text that shows up whenever you disconnect from the network.

Private messages: do you want them in there own windows or in the main chat? this will also effect logging (see advanced preferences)

The Appearance section has 4 sections:

in Font you choose the font and size you want your chat text to be.

in Colors you set the color for each category. One feature of the colors i'd like to point out is the opacity control. most applications don't have this so you may not know about it.

When you adjust the opacity, of (for example) the background color, the background of the chat window becomes somewhat transparent:

on the other hand, there is also an overall opacity option as well:

this option affects the entire window:

it's up to you which you like better.

having the program play sounds lets you know if there is any activity going on in the channel.

next up is the advanced tab... the advanced tab is the miscellaneous prefs catchall.

one piece of behavior i get a lot of crap about is that if someone has text selected the chat window doesn't scroll with new lines. it makes sense to stop the scrolling if you are looking for something in particular, however if you accidentally select something, it makes things act odd. just check this checkbox, and it'll continue to scroll when you have text selected. for better of for worst.

one thing that you can do with TS Chat is you can find out what system other people are using. this is done through the Mac Info, you can disable this feature if you want to.

you can adjust how far nicknames are truncated with the 1st slider, and how far things indent with the 2nd.

there is a live preview underneath to give you an idea what it'll look like.

If you leave the CTCP enabled box on, people can see what version of ThinkSecret Chat you're using and they can see how many seconds it takes for a message to get to you from them. It's not harmful, and there are no security problems with leaving it on. It's just a question of if you are annoyed by messages that pop up saying people checked their delay. Also, it has come to my attention that some peopel like their privacy (missy)

The Message of the Day is a few things about the server that come up when you connect - on the servers we use, it talks about the person the server was named after. It also shows rules about the server. There is no reason to leave this on - you can if you'd like.

Require Option Key for Chat Buffer - if you hold down the option key when you push the up (or down) arrow on your keyboard, it'll scroll through a list of the last things you said. if you uncheck this box, this will be the action of an unmodified arrow.

thats it for your prefs, now on to the rest of the interface.

There is a drawer to the right of the main chat window. On that drawer are a few buttons. Here is what they do:

Private Message: This opens a Private Message Window, allowing you to send and reseave private messages with the selected user.

Show Info: This brings up an info window showing information about the selected person such as: Nickname, Real Name, time since they last talked, and the time they signed on to chat.

Ignore: This ignores a nickname so you won't receive messages from them anymore. They will appear gray in the user list.

Ping: This checks the delay between you and another user. If that user has CTCP off, it won't work.

Version: This will tell you what chat program someone is using, and what version. Some common chat programs are: Ircle, mIRC, X-Chat, ShadowIRC, Snak, and AthenaIRC. You are using ThinkSecret Chat.

Music: If the selected user is playing music through iTunes, you will see some information about the track that is currently playing.

Mac Info: This can tell you info about someone's computer, but it only works if the person is using Ircle of ThinkSecret Chat.

Registering a nickname:

Connect to chat and change to the nickname you'd like to register. You can change nicknames by typing /nick NewNick into the input field, replacing NewNick with the nickname you want to use. Go up to the File menu, and choose Register Nickname. Follow the steps, and boom, you're done.

Hopefully, this Read Me file has helped you understand more about Spychat. If you need any more help, feel free to ask in Spychat. If you're having trouble connecting, e-mail us atAHDuke99@spymac.com.

Version History
the version history has moved to http://sourceforge.net/projects/spychat

Clickable Links

Special thanks to all the Spychat Team and TiHesNikki for the base code of Spychat!

URLTextView and URLMutableAttributedString classes:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification,
are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list
of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or
other materials provided with the distribution.
* Neither the name of Spychat Official Team nor the names of its contributors may be
used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without
specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
"AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR
CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL,
EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR
PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY
OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING
NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks again to Spychat for the URLTextView code!

Last updated: November 17, 2003