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 "Chat"-program, which supports the IRC protocol. Many IRC applications exist in the market. Probably one is sitting on your computer without your knowledge. If you doesn't find one neither on your computer nor on your installation media, you should search the internet, to find one fitting your environment.

• Pidgin (multi-platform, IM/messaging client with IRC-protocol support)
• XChat (multi-platform)
• mIRC (Windows)
• Konversation (KDE)
• Kopete (KDE)
• Colloquy (OS X)
• Adium (OS X)

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.

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 : [1].

Quit IRC

To quit IRC, just execute:

/quit

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.

How, How, How

This section is supposed to explain, How to speak up in the channel, but all you do is say, you should speak up and ask your question right away.

But you give absolutely no instructions on how to do it. Is IRC a website or a program, please explain? Do you have to acquire some software? Do you have to install something? These are some of the questions which must be answered in order to explain, How to speak up in the channel.

 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).