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 <username> <server>[:<port>[:<password>]] [... <serverN>[:<port>[:<password>]]]

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 <amber@ojnk.net>. 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/<screenname>/buddy_list to use it.  Note
that any alphabetic characters in <screenname> must be lowercase and
that there should be no space characters in <screenname>.

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 <ryan@numb.org>
