Please note that PhoeBox is no longer developed.
Download PhoeBox
7.06 - diff between 7.05 and 7.06 (11
March 2001)
Read about what is new in the version.
Starting July 2001, I do not maintain nor use PhoeBox anymore. If you are interested in using PhoeBox, then I suggest you start using irssi which is an excellent, light IRC client, and will give you all the features PhoeBox provides. For the PhoeBox users, here is a PhoeBox theme for irssi.
PhoeBox is an ircII script that I use daily and that I have been working on since 1997. It does what I need, and doesn't do anything else.
It was started using bits and pieces of some scripts that I liked:
However, those scripts had too many useless features (at leats to my taste) and things that I didn't like, so I decided to merge all the characteristics that I liked and to drop all of the others. As of today, there isn't much code left from PhoeBox 1.0 (i.e. from Phoenix or Textbox). The script was named PhoeBox as a tribute to Phoenix and Textbox.
PhoeBox used to work with the ircII client. It now requires EPIC.
IRC text clients are really powerful. However, their usability is often limited. This is the aim of PhoeBox: making EPIC easy to use.
Below is a non-exhaustive list of what PhoeBox provides:
In the following, x.xx represents the version number (such as 6.05).
config.pb. If you are not
happy about the colors, you can also edit colors.pb..ircrc:
set load_path .:~/PhoeBox-x.xx load PhoeBox.irc
config.pb. For
example, if you want PhoeBox to warn you when people say john,
colonel, hannibal and smith, you
should have:
^assign MASK.1 john ^assign MASK.2 colonel ^assign MASK.3 hannibal ^assign MASK.4 smith
/quiet function. Originally,
you could put in config.pb /assign QMODE
OFF to have it beep, but the proper way to do that starting
in version 7.04 is to use /quiet OFF.PhoeBox was originally written and is maintained by Hugo Haas.
It was at some point maintained by Robert Chéramy when I didn't have time to deal with it anymore. He added the topic in the status bar.
Other contributors are: Arnaud Bienvenu (global color support since version 4.30), Samuel Hocevar and Pierre Baillet (|<oWb0y module).
The script includes code from other people (split detection, enconding functions, etc). See the source for the credits.
We hope you enjoy PhoeBox as much as we do.
Version 7.06 is a minor update of codes.pb to have the
display functions show the time is SHOWTIME is enabled.
PhoeBox has a logging module (logging.pb) which logs IRC
sessions in timestamped, raw IRC format. Here is an example:
[Wed Nov 8 10:44:11 2000] DeltaData!-Dathan@212.213.222.85 PRIVMSG #francaise :yo [Wed Nov 8 10:44:45 2000] DeltaData!-Dathan@212.213.222.85 PRIVMSG #francaise :what the hell are we going to do about sorting the .wfr when it is UTF-16 ????? [Wed Nov 8 10:45:03 2000] hugo!hugo@localhost PRIVMSG #francaise :wfr? [Wed Nov 8 10:45:06 2000] irc.stealth.net 305 hugo :You are no longer marked as being away [Wed Nov 8 10:45:30 2000] DeltaData!-Dathan@212.213.222.85 PRIVMSG #francaise :Word Frequency File :) [Wed Nov 8 10:48:35 2000] hugo!hugo@localhost PRIVMSG #francaise :hmmm... I don't know what it is, and I'm not sure it's a bad thing :)
I wrote, based on something by Gerald Oskoboiny, a Perl script to reformat the logs, do search queries, to reformat them:
Nov/ 8 10:44 #francaise DeltaData: yo Nov/ 8 10:44 #francaise DeltaData: what the hell are we going to do about sorting the .wfr when it is UTF-16 ????? Nov/ 8 10:45 #francaise hugo: wfr? Nov/ 8 10:45 #francaise DeltaData: Word Frequency File :) Nov/ 8 10:48 #francaise hugo: hmmm... I don't know what it is, and I'm not sure it's a bad thing :)
vil allows you to view your IRC logs, hence the name. For the documentation, read the source.
PhoeBox 7.05 - diff between 7.04 and 7.05 (21 February 2001)
This version fixes a bug in the handling of the kick commands received and
the mass op commands (/op and /massop) from war.pb are
back.
This version fixes a tiny bug in the quiet mode. I took the
opportunity to change the configuration file. The right way to set the
quiet mode is to do quiet OFF (instead of the old
assign QMODE OFF).
This version fixes a problem with the logging of private messages introduced
in version 7.00. It also fixes other minor problems and
changes a few things in the display. war.pb is gone since IRC has
changed a lot in the last 4 years which is it is now obsolete.
This version fixes two problems introduced in version 7.00. Version 7.00 was a major rewrite and had not been tested extensively.
It also fixes a display bug which was there since version... 4.30.
This version features three minor fixes for version 7.00. Version 7.00 was a major rewrite and had not been tested extensively.
Version 7.00 is a major rewrite of many functions. The reason for that is that PhoeBox was written 4 years ago with functions simple functions. EPIC4 has many advanced functions which were defined in PhoeBox, or that make the code much lighter.
I have moreover rewritten a lot of things that were not written by me and that I wasn't happy about. I believe that now I got rid of obscure legacy code.
The changes are:
SHOWTIME is on./pbhelp is
called.The result is a better, yet lighter and faster, script.
With all the changes I made last week, I have bumped the version number to 7.00. I am pretty happy about the state the program is in now so I do not expect big changes soon. On the other hand, with so many changes, I expect a few bugs and another version soon.
Version 6.08 fixes some display bugs of version 6.07. It also makes the use
of a separate window for private messages options (see the
SEPARATE_MSGWIN and MSGWIN_SIZE options in
config.pb; this option is deactivated by default not to confuse
users used to the earlier versions.
The input line now has a prompt which shows on which channel you are talking. There is a good chance that it will help people writing to the right channel, and by people I mean me.
I also cleaned up the code a little bit.
PhoeBox now uses a separate window for private messages and queries. It also prints the full date for recorded messages.
Finally, it now always print the name of the channel a message is being sent to. Not doing so leads to confusion when a user joins many channels.
This version fixes a few bugs.
It also binds channels to the windows they are in. It basically redifines the switch_channel command to allow the user, for example, to switch between channels #a and #b in window 1, and between channels #c and #d in window 2.
The drawback is that currently, using window commands
is hazardous. I will have to fix this in a future version. I advise the
user to only use ^X, ^O (^E
has been freed for the end_of_line function), join
and leave to move channels around. Avoid closing a non-empty
window too.