Misc features
Snak has two commands that you can use if you encounter a problem and need to send me information so I can see what happened.

The /debuglog command opens and closes a text file to which Snak writes all outgoing and incoming text. By default this is turned off. If you have server related problems this file may contain clues that could help me fix the problem.

The Debug log window is activated by typing /debug . The log window lists a number of internal events in a scrolling window. That log may provide helpful information to me in the event you experience problems using Snak. 

The MP3 request list
The MP3 request list is useful if you visit MP3 channels. It makes it very wasy to keep track of what songs are available, and makes it easy to download them.

To use it, go to the Sound Request preference panel and choose "Show Sound Send Request List". That will add a new tab to the list window, which can be accessed directly with cmd-M.

Then join one or more channels that are decicated to MP3 exchange. To find such a channel, do a channel list with cmd-L and enter "mp3" in the Include field and a reasonable minumum number of members, like 20 or so. 

Once you've entered a MP3 channel, you will see many messages scroll by very fast. These are typically requests sent by someone to another channel member that happens to have songs available for download. The traffic is typically very high, making it hard to find things and discover who has what songs available.

A typical request is in the form "!nick song". If nick has the song available, he will then start sending it to the person that sent the message.

The MP3 request list will filter out the song requests that people send to the channel so that you can also request those songs. In a couple of hours in a busy MP3 channel the list may pick up thousands of available songs that you can request with a click on a button.

 To specifically search for an artist or song that interest you, most channels support a "@find" or "@locator" function.  Type @find and the phrase you are searching for and send it to the channel to ask who has the song available for download.

If someone has it, he will send a private message with instructions on how to retrieve a song. The MP3 request list will pick up this information and you can then easily download the song.

Clicking the Get button will send a normal "!nick song" message to the channel, and it you are lucky the offerer will start sending you the file. If this doesn't happen right away, the offerer may be busy with other clients and will send the file to you later.

Most of the people offering songs are running a particular script that responds to these messages automatically so they have to be formatted just right. The MP3 request list makes that easy.

Most channels place limits on how frequently you can request files. Try to not send a message more frequently than every few seconds. The list supports multiple selection, will send multiple requests to the channel if you do that.

The songs are sent as  DCC file transfer (see the DCC chapter for further information) and it may be useful for you to select a folder for MP3 files and select that in the DCC auto receive preferences. Then you can turn on Auto Accept DCC from everyone, and the incoming files will automatically go there. 

This is useful because the offerers may have you wait a while for a popular song that many people have requested. When it finally gets to be your turn, you may not notice that the offerer is now trying to send you the file and it will time out.

The Command reference

The Command reference gives you easy access to a list of the available commands and the definition of the defined alases.

The Command reference is opened from the Help menu.

You can drag a command from the command reference to an input field.

The commands and variables are not directly editable from this window. To add or delete commands you need to edit the script files in the Scripts folder with a text editor. The script files are read in when Snak starts up, so the changes take effect on next start up.

The Setup Assistant
The Setup Assistant that is run the first time you start Snak, can also be invoked directly from the help menu.