IRC and Dalnet and mIRC
You can read an article containing some introductory information about IRC written by a Dalnet IRCop named Cit. An IRCop is one of a very few users of an IRC network who have far-reaching and extraordinary powers, even beyond those of a channel founder.
Why and How to Register Your Nick
Why. The main reason to register your nick (a nickname for "nickname") is so that no one else can use it. Most users on IRC end up choosing a nick and sticking with it, which is handy for being recognized by their fellow users. But if you don't register your nick, it can be swiped by anyone else and registered, thus preventing you from using it. Also, if you do become recognized by your nick and it gets swiped, the swiper can potentially raise major havoc with your reputation.
(On Dalnet, nick registrations lapse after 22 consecutive days of disuse, so only after the nick you wanted lapses, if ever, can you hope to recover it and register it for yourself.)
Another reason to register your nick is so that you can send and receive Memoserv messages, which are like Dalnet-specific e-mail, with a limit of 255 characters.
How. Now, here's how to register your nick.
First, make sure you are the nick you want to register. To change nicks, type /nick mynick
Second, think of a password. It cannot be the word "password" and it cannot be your nick itself. Of course, follow the usual guidelines about making it difficult to guess and making sure to remember it. (If you do forget it, first strike the side of your head with the heel of your hand, then /join #Dragonrealm, where the Ops will try to help you if you say, "Pretty please.")
Third, to register type the following:
/msg nickserv register password
That's all there is to it. Wait until Nickserv acknowledges you, and thereafter no one can use your nick (for more than 60 seconds, anyway) as long as you use it once every 22 days.
If you won't be able to log on for 22 consecutive days and you want to keep your nick registered, tell a trusted friend your password and ask him to log on for you.
To change your password, merely enter the following command:
/msg nickserv set passwd newpassword
Away-nick. When you're in a channel and are going to be away from the keyboard for more than a minute or so, the others in the channel will appreciate it if you change your nick temporarily to one that indicates you are indeed away rather than just ignoring everyone clamoring for your valuable attention. That other nick is called an "away-nick," and you should register it too.
If your regular nick is "Nugat," then you might want to choose "Nugat_away" as your away-nick. To register it, simply change to it and register it in the manner explained above. (And on the subject of away-nicks, you can add them to your mIRC Notify List just as easily as any others.)
Frilly Froo-froo Fun with Fonts
If you are using the current version of mIRC, (version 5.11 as of this writing), you can affect how the lines you type to the channel appear to others (assuming their IRC clients are capable of rendering the effects properly). You can produce bold text, underlined text, reverse text (not demonstrated here), and many pretty colors.
Bold = Control-B
To boldface any string of text, type an opening Control-B, then the string, and then a closing Control-B. For example, to render the words "no idea" in bold in the sentence "I have no idea what you mean by that," you'd type as follows:
I have [Control-B]no idea[Control-B] what you mean by that.
As you're typing (don't type the square brackets, of course), the Control-B's will show up as solid rectangles, but when you hit the enter key the line will appear on everyone's screen this way:
I have no idea what you mean by that.
Underline = Control-U
To underline a string, do the same as with bolding, except use an opening and closing pair of Control-U's instead of Control-B's.
I have [Control-U]no idea[Control-U] what you mean by that
becomes
I have no idea what you mean by that.
Reverse = Control-R
To make text appear in reverse colors--which means that the background color (usually white) and the foreground color (usually black) chosen by the other users will be swapped--do the same as with bolding or underlining, except use an opening and closing pair of Control-R's.
Combining effects. You can also combine the bold and underline and reverse effects, though if you want to then you're probably the sort of person who frequently types lots of exclamation points for no reason, so we're not going to tell you how to combine these effects. You'll have to decide whether you care to figure it out for yourself.
Along those same lines, it seems desirable in general for users of IRC to communicate as precisely as possible, even if they mean to communicate equivocally. If you'd like to read further rantings and/or ravings on this subject, you may.
Color = Control-K
Using an opening and closing pair of Control-K's (for Kolor, or Kolour if you're British, which the author of mIRC is) allows you to change the foreground or background color, or both, of the text you type to the channel. But unlike with the three text effects above, you must follow the Control-K with either a number or a number and a comma and another number. The sixteen numbers you can use range from 0 (white) to 15 (light grey).
We'll explain only the two most common Control-K possibilities--changing the foreground color alone and changing both the foreground color and the background color. Other combinations are possible, and you should feel free to experiment to learn what they are and how they work. (Also, you should keep in mind that, unlike mIRC, many IRC clients cannot decode colors; what the users of those programs see is a bunch of unintelligible boxes and other screen goop.)
Change foreground only. To change the foreground color of a line of type you're sending to the channel, start by typing Control-Knumber, where number is a number from 0 to 15. Then type whatever text you want and hit the return key. The text you typed will appear on everyone's screen in the color you've chosen.
Change foreground and background. To change the foreground and the background colors of your line of text, start by typing Control-Kfnumber,bnumber, where fnumber is the number of the color you want for the foreground, i.e., the text itself, and bnumber is the number of the color you want for the background on top of which the foreground will be seen. Do not omit the comma between the two numbers.
For example, to type "Look at me" in white text on a blue background, you'd type the following and then hit the return key:
[Control-K]0,2Look at me
The "0" changes the foreground from its default of black to white, and the "2" changes the background from its default of white to blue. Again, do not type the brackets and do type the comma between the foreground number and the background number.
Here are the sixteen colors and their numbers:
0 = white
1 = black
2 = blue
3 = green
4 = light red
5 = brown
6 = purple
7 = orange
8 = yellow
9 = light green
10= cyan
11= light cyan
12= light blue
13= peenk
14= grey
15= light grey
Download the ^K Color Charts. You can download a file that contains all 16 colors in all the 256 possible combinations, which you can use while you're on IRC to see what they really look like, or for any other purpose. The file is in ASCII text and is designed to be added to your mIRC popups (although with a little editing it could be added to your aliases).
If you don't have any idea what popups (or aliases) are and don't want to learn, this file will be of little use to you. If you do understand popups and want to check out this code, called "^K Color Charts," download it, then open it in Notepad or some other ASCII editor, Control-C Copy it, then open up the appropriate View in your mIRC popups and Control-V Insert it wherever you want.
(You'll see that the first choice (color = 0 = white background) is different from the others in that it recommends that the users widen their screens enough to insure that there are no line breaks, because these lines look prettier that way.)
A Tip Regarding ^K Colors. First, you should understand from the explanation above that if the background color is the same as the foreground color, the string you enclose will appear blank in the background color you chose. For example,
[Control-K]6,6This is a blank purple line for now
will appear as a featureless purple bar on everyone's screen, because the purple foreground, number 6, will blend into the purple background, also number 6. However, you can view the default colors of anything on your screen at the moment merely by dragging through any colored text. Try it.
More Commands
Below are some useful commands you can use on Dalnet that you might have forgotten or never knew about. Items in italics need to be replaced with the appropriate value, such as "Nugat" for nick.
/msg nickserv info nick provides you with certain information about the named nick, including when he last logged on to Dalnet.
/whois nick provides you with additional information about the named nick.
Kill a ghost, etc. This page is under construction.
