This documentation was created in color, certain graphics may not look the way you will see them in B&W.  Secondly, there is a find feature with this manual, use it to find keywords for explanations to your questions if you are not going to read this thoroughly.

IMPORTANT WARNING:  This READ ME pertains to the abilities of Homer v.93.  If you find a copy of Homer that is older than .93, you may find that not all of the commands and/or functions described within this file are implemented.  Furthermore, some of the commands listed in this documentation may cause an older version of Homer to crash your computer.  Make sure you have a current copy of Homer.  Homer now comes in two parts, Homer (the application) and Homer Data.  Both must be placed at the same location (folder, desktop, etc.)

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If you come across any glaring errors with this documentation and/or would like to suggest some additional information or examples be placed in here to make the Homer experience that much more simplified, contact me at pharmacy@staff.tc.umn.edu                    =-->       Corum
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Homer™
An IRC Client for the Macintosh

Version 0.93

©1992-94 Toby Smith and Blue Cow Software

Programming, Design and Concept by Toby Smith
Graphics by Steve Mariotti

Legal Stuff

Homer 0.93 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 a  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.

Finally, you can usually find me on the #macintosh channel.  My nickname is Primary.

Shareware Notice (please read this)

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 and 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.

Patrick Parker gets a huge thanks for creating the Homer documentation, and the bulk of the help file.  Thanks to him, you know how to use Homer.

 Chris Cates gets special mention for being the person on #macintosh with the funniest /away messages, and because he's coming to Pittsburgh, which is just cool.

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 should be on store shelves Real Soon Now.  For more information about this cool program, contact Charlie at cem@cs.brown.edu.

I'd like to thank Sam "Chinese Dog Satan" Hui for being such a cool pal for the last 2 years.  Sam's going/has gone back to England in August, 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 no more sympathy, since he's back online these days.

Quotes

“Praise Jesus and his mechanical man.” - Tracer

“Icy dog buttocks!!   hahaha...  I'm a simp.” - LanceWax

“These chicken wings really suck!” - Corum

“NO MORE DAMN FLOATERS!” - Primary

“Bond, James Bond.” - Igor

What is IRC?

IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat.  What it is is a way for people to talk with thousands of other people, all over the world, in real time (or something close to real time anyway).  There are machines around the world known as IRC servers, whose purpose it is to shuttle around all the things that everyone is saying.  IRC users interact with something called an IRC client.  IRC clients are the interface between a single user and the rest of the IRC world.  The program you have here, Homer, is an IRC client written for the Mac, in an attempt to use some of the Mac's snazzy features to create an easy-to-use and powerful interface to IRC.