Homer and its accompanying documentation is owned and copyrighted by Blue Cow Software and Toby Smith. You may freely distribute Homer, but all original documentation must be included with any distribution, and no modifications can be made to the documentation or to the program itself.
Homer 0.93 is not free. If you use it, you are obligated to send the shareware registration fee. Please see the Shareware section for details.
The author makes no warranties whatsoever as to Homer's usefulness or stability, and takes no responsibilities for anything that may occur to your computer while Homer is running or is present on your system.
Contacting Me
You can reach me for bug reports, suggestions, or job offers at:
tob@zaphod.ee.pitt.edu.
The latest version of Homer can be found on zaphod as well. Just use anonymous FTP to zaphod.ee.pitt.edu. The newest versions of Homer are kept in the pub directory. Other items of interest there include StuffitExpander, which allows you to decompress Stuffit Deluxe 3.0 archives (the format I use for compressing Homer), and ZapTCP, a handy-dandy INIT which will reset your TCP line if a TCP application (like Homer) unexpectedly quits. This can save you many a reboot.
Shareware payments (or anything else you might like to send me, so long as it's not ticking) may be sent to:
Blue Cow Software
6656 Ridgeville St.
Pittsburgh, PA 15217
USA
For those of you in Europe, we have a shiny new address just for you:
Blue Cow Software
27 Woodstock Ave.
London
NW11 9RG
UK
The UK address should be used for European payments only. All other correspondence and payments should be sent to the US address.
Shareware Notice
For those of you living in a vacuum, shareware basically means that if you may use this software for a short amount of time (say one week) to determine whether you like it. If you do, and want to continue to use it, you're legally obligated to pay the shareware fee. Now, as you might guess, the local constable isn't going to be coming to your house with a warrant for your arrest if you don't pay. Indeed, if you don't pay, nothing bad at all will happen to you, except you might feel a bit like a shmuck for being such a cheapskate. And I'll probably get the distinct impression that Homer sucks and will stick it in a closet somewhere, behind my tetherball set and my sousaphone. If you DO pay, on the other hand, you'll make me very happy, and I'll continue to work on making Homer better, and I'll be more inclined to listen to your suggestions for new features, too. If you're a university and install copies of Homer on all of the Macs in your labs and don't send me something, though, I'm going to feel VERY put out.
All payments are one-shot things. Pay now, and you're in the clear for all future updates. My asking price has increased since the first public offering of Homer, due to the increased amount of time I've put into the program to try to accommodate user's needs. The price might go up again in future releases, so just think of the wise business savvy you're showing by registering now!
U.S. pricing:
Individual copies of Homer: $25
Site license (unlimited use on multiple machines at one installation): $500
Worldwide license (unlimited use at multiple installations): $2000
U.K. pricing:
Individual copies of Homer: £20
Site license (unlimited use on multiple machines at one installation): £340
Worldwide license (unlimited use at multiple installations): £1400
It's probably easiest to send cash for the individual payments, or US/UK checks are fine too. For anyone outside the US and UK, money orders would be appreciated. See the above section for our addresses.
By the way, if you don't feel like sending money, or if you have major problems with Homer, or it's just a bad hair day and you can't get motivated to send anything, please at least write me some e-mail (or better yet, send a postcard or something) and let me know what you liked or didn't like. It's hard for me to address your problems and complaints when I don't know about them.
Special Thanks
Hearty thanks are in order for all the brave folks who have been using Homer and making suggesting, bug reports, and even making pretty graphics for your amusement.
The most important thanks go to all the nice folks who have already registered for Homer 0.90-0.92. Without the encouragement and support of these people, it's extremely unlikely that Homer 0.93 would exist. Thank you!
Special graphics and inspriational thanks go out to Steve Mariotti, who's responsible not only for almost all of the graphics in the new version, but also for the never-ending stream of advice and all-around slackinomnity that is largely responsible for my continuing interest in IRC. He also wrote Codpiece and HomerPaint, which was just damned nice of him.
This help box code was written by James Walker, who was nice enough to make the code freely available, saving others from having to write their own.
Testing thanks are in order for more folks than I can remember, thanks to too many late-night Sam Adams.
Pat Parker gets a huge thanks for creating the Homer documentation, and the bulk of this help file. Thanks to him, you know how to use Homer.
Chris Cates gets special mention for being online as often as I am, which lets me know that there are other people out there with just as little of a life as I have. Oh, and he'll kick your ass in Mortal Kombat 2. Really. It's no contest.
Eric Carlson deserves a line in here for providing me with such ample opportunities to feel bent while in Austin, and for being the very first #mac regular to register Homer.
Charlie Moylan gets a super-special mention for being such a good sport in the face of grave IRC trauma, and for bearing with the serial version of Homer even though it was dropping his connection once every two or three minutes. You should all show your support for Chuck by rushing out to buy his new game, Flight Commander, which is available at Mac's Place.
I'd like to thank Sam "Chinese Dog Satan" Hui for being such a cool pal for the last 2 years. Sam's has gone back to England, so if you're American and have the ability to get Sam a job in a marketing or database kind of position, drop me a line so we can get his skinny butt back on this side of the Atlantic.
Tim McClarren gets mentioned for being the refried Lost IRCer. We all miss him dearly.
Quotes
“Praise Jesus and his mechanical man.” - Tracer
“Icy dog buttocks!! hahaha... I'm a simp.” - LanceWax
What is Homer?
Homer is an IRC client for the Macintosh. It comes in two flavors, serial and TCP.
What is IRC?
IRC is an interconnected group of computers that allow people around the world to communicate. It allows people to join in groups (known as channels) distinguished by topics and talk about whatever. It's also a tremendous waste of time, and a good way to meet lots of bizarre people.
Using Homer
Okay, here's a quick overview of what Homer is and how to use it quickly. This will only provide a quick overview of how to use it for those of you who don't bother reading READ ME files. For more indepth and detailed instructions on how to use Homer, please read the complete READ ME file. It should answer most, if not all, your questions.
You're running Homer obviously or you wouldn't be reading this. So.. you've got a start.
If you're running the serial version, read the Serial Instructions in this help file before going any further.
In most cases, if you didn't change any of the startup information, you are logged on already and you are known as KickMe. Quickly read the information below on what the first four boxes meant (when you initially ran Homer) and what you should type into them.
Server Address: The server address is which IRC server Homer looks for to connect to. For now, do NOT change this information since if you don't know another server. The default is 'irc-2.mit.edu'
User ID: The user ID is the word that will appear before your IP address. If you didn't change anything when you logged on, you are now known as 'newbie@your-address'. 'newbie' can be anything you want it to be.
Username: The Username is the information that will appear after your User ID when you log onto IRC. If you didn't change anything when you logged on, you are now known as newbie@your-address (I'm an IRC newbie!). The part in parentheses that follows your address can be anything you type in this part.
Nick: Your Nick (Nickname) is what you will be recognized as. If you didn't change anything at startup of Homer, you are now known to other users as 'KickMe'.
Server Port: This field should rarely be needed. It allows you to change the number of the "port" that Homer will attempt to connect to. In 99% of the cases, this value should be 6667, but apparently there are some servers out there that use other numbers. Note that the value you type in this field won't be saved from run to run, because 6667 should be the correct value almost all of the time.
The first thing to do when you get Homer running is to arrange the windows so that you can readily see everything. Your console window is what shows automatically when you start Homer. You will rarely need to see the console window, so it might be best to resize this window to a much smaller size. The next window is the text input window (which has a button labelled 'Action' on the right hand side of it). Lastly is your Homer Control Panel window (which has a picture of a boot, ear, wand on the bottom and also your current nickname at the bottom). It is best to usually place this to the right of your channel window. All of this is variable depending on the size of the screen your are using.
At any point when you're on IRC you can change your nickname by clicking on your name located at the bottom of Homer's control panel window, which says at the bottom 'I am:'. If you click on the name that follows this, it will allow you to change to a new nickname. Try this now if you haven't already done so.
To join a channel, select 'New Channel' from the 'File' menu. It defaults to #macintosh. Go ahead and click 'Join' and you will now join the channel of individuals who are currently on the channel #macintosh. Go ahead and re-arrange your windows if you need to see what you need. To close a channel, you either close the window as you normally would with a click in the upper left corner, or use cmd-w. You can join up to 10 channels simultaneously.
In your Homer Control Panel, you will now see a list of names of people that are currently online in the channel #macintosh. Your name shuld appear in this list as well. To see the information for a person, select a name from the list by single-clicking it and then clicking the 'View' button at the bottom. You may also view your information in the same process to see how you look to others.
The 'Kick' and 'Op' buttons are discussed in the detailed READ ME file.
To speak to individuals on the channel, type your text into the Input Text Window as you normally would and hit your return key to send what you have typed to the channel. You may edit what you have typed just as you would in a word processor. Cut/Copy/Paste commands all work in their usual manner as well. Anything that is typed and sent is sent as a public message. All individuals on the channel can see that text. To send a private message to a single person, read below.
To send a private message, double-click an individuals name in the list of names in your Homer Control Panel. After you have done so, you will notice that the individual whose name you clicked now appears in your Input Text Window on the left-hand side below the words 'Send Text Only To'. If you double-click another persons name, it will replace that name as well. For a trial test, double click your own name, it should appear there. Now, you have designated a person to send a private message to, but you have one more step. Next, click on the words 'Send Text Only To' (or as a shortcut hit your tab key) and this puts Homer into private message mode. When in private message mode, whatever text you type in your input box will be sent privately to the person indicated. By clicking (or hitting the tab key) again, you alternate back and forth between private message mode. Try sending a message to yourself to experiment with results.
To quit Homer, just quit and it will ask for parting comments which will be sent to the channel that you were last on.
'Actions' and the 'Topic' buttons are discussed in the complete READ ME file.
To see a list of all the current channels that are available to join, type the following command (including the slash) /list. This will list all the current channels that are being used followed by a number indicating how many individuals are currently on that channel.
Serial Version Instructions
To run serial Homer, you need:
1. A modem or some sort of serial line
2. A unix account
To run it, do the following:
1. Boot the program, check out the incredible About... box, then select the appropriate options for the Communications Options dialog box. This dialog is found in the Connection menu.
2. The "Dumb Terminal" window on your screen is a dumb terminal. Use this to log in to your unix account. Note I said DUMB - it's not a VT100, so don't be tryin' to do VT100-y things, you'll just get screen gerb.
3. When you've reached your unix prompt, select "Start IRC Session" from the Actions menu, and from here on, things are the same as they are with the TCP version, so just read the stuff in the sections above.
4. When you're done, don't quit IRC yourself. Instead, select "Close IRC Session" from the Actions menu, and you'll be back to your friendly unix prompt.
