WHAT IS PORK? ------------- pork is an ncurses-based AOL instant messenger client. It uses the OSCAR protocol (the one the windows client uses) to access AIM. Pork features Perl scripting; an online help system; the ability to configure nearly all aspects of the program's look-and-feel; an alias system; and a powerful, fully-configurable key binding system. It supports being logged in with more than one screen name at the same time. The default look-and-feel of the client is modeled after the ircII IRC client. Anyone comfortable using ircII (or any clients derived from it -- e.g., epic, BitchX, etc.) will feel comfortable using pork. pork now supports IRC. The syntax for connecting to an IRC server is /connect -irc [:[:]] [... [:[:]]] The look-and-feel of pork is pretty much a complete ripoff of the the look-and-feel of the excellent mw4.irc script for the epic IRC client by Amber Adams . All credit for it goes to her. WHAT'S IT GOOD FOR? ------------------- Before I wrote pork, I had wanted a console mode AIM client that I could run inside of screen (http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/screen.html) so that I would be able to access it from anywhere. I tried a few other console AIM clients, but none of them was very good at all, so I wrote my own. GETTING STARTED --------------- If you've never used pork, you should probably read the 'QUICK_START' document. Even if you have used it, it might be useful. A sample buddy list is provided in the 'examples' directory. You can edit it and copy it to ~/.pork//buddy_list to use it. Note that any alphabetic characters in must be lowercase and that there should be no space characters in . If you've signed on to AIM in the past with the account with which you'll be connecting, pork will download the buddy list that's been stored on the server; you won't have to provide a buddy list, pork will bring your buddies to you. Type /help inside of the client to get a list of the topics for which help is available. Read the TODO file (I have actually updated this file). Send me patches. Ryan McCabe