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#FAQ
DMDirc is an open-source IRC client, written in Java. Its official website is http://www.DMDirc.com/.
IRC - short for Internet Relay Chat - is a protocol which allows people to engage in text-based communications online. The standards for IRC (RFC 1459) were first published in May 1993 by Jarkko Oikarinen.
DMDirc will attempt to transcode any text it displays into the charset specified by your system. Most distributions will use a unicode character set by default, but a few default to the older 'C' character set. If your system doesn't use a unicode locale, this will probably result in unicode characters being displayed as sequences of question marks. To change your system locale, you need to set either the LANG or the LC_CTYPE environment variables to a unicode character set such as 'en_GB.UTF-8'. See this section from the Gentoo documentation (applicable to all Linux distributions) for more information.
To run DMDirc, you need a copy of the Java Runtime Environment, version 7.0 or later. This can be obtained from http://www.java.com/. DMDirc should run on any operating system that the JRE can run on (including Linux, Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X).
##How is DMDirc different to other IRC clients? There are numerous features which distinguish DMDirc from other IRC clients. First of all, it's written in Java, which means it's completely cross platform - it works on Windows as well as it does on Linux. Secondly, DMDirc is free in both senses of the word - it costs no money to obtain, and the source code is freely available so people so inclined can look to see how it was made, and alter the code if they desire.
DMDirc also has a wide feature set, while maintaining an uncluttered and highly usable appearance.
The nickname that DMDirc uses when connecting to a server is determined by the profile selected. You can edit your profile(s) using the Profile Manager, which is accessible via the Settings menu. When connecting to a server using the New Server dialog (File→New Server), you can select the profile to use for that connection using a drop down box.
DMDirc does not support scripting per se. To extend the functionality of the client, you can either use actions (see next FAQ) or plugins. We believe that the actions system is capable of performing most of the functions that scripts do in other clients (within reason - you can't, for example, write a HTTP server using actions like you can with mIRC scripting).
Actions allow you to control how DMDirc responds to events. Actions are triggered by an event (such as someone talking, joining a channel, you changing the active window), and, subject to a set of conditions, execute a set of commands as though you typed them yourself.
Actions can thus be used to automatically grant op status to people (triggered when someone joins a channel, with conditions for the channel name and nickname), automatically connect to servers (triggered when the client starts, executing the /newserver command), and many more things.
The location of the DMDirc configuration directory varies from operating system to operating system. Linux, Unix, Solaris and FreeBSD users will find the DMDirc config dir under their home directory: ~/.DMDirc/. Windows users will find it under their Application Data directory (typically C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\DMDirc). Finally, Mac OS X users will find it somewhere or other (finish me).
##How do I install plugins? Plugins are put into the “plugins” directory within your DMDirc configuration directory (see above). Most plugins will also need to be within further subdirectories, based on their package name. Package names are normally a domain name written out backwards, such as “com.dmdirc.addons.dcop”; the files for plugins in this package will need to be placed under /plugins/com/dmdirc/addons/dcop/.
Once a plugin is placed in the correct folder, it should be displayed in the Plugin Manager (Settings→Plugins→Manage Plugins), and from there you can enable it for use in DMDirc.