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LANChat a network chatting application

LANChat is a local area network chatting program. It allows you to chat with your friends
in a very user-friendly environment. It allows every user to have his own color, you can send
pop-ups, private messages and many more...

The distribution of LANChat

As LANChat is free software you may distribute it freely and even change its source code,
but you have to remember that 'free' is not 'public domain'. Also, if you want to use LANChat
as a commercial-application (in your internet cafe or other commercial institution).

System requirements

To run LANChat Pro you require:

- Windows 95OSR/98/98SE/2000 - a network card (any type)
- Local Area Network (you can run on a single machine but what for ?)
- TCP/IP protocol in your network (standard these days)

To enjoy LANChat you require:

- Windows 98/98SE
- enough RAM for Windows 98 to run smooth
- 800x600 15/16bit color graphics card
- soundcard
- network card, network, TCP/IP, ...

Installation of the package

2.1 Manual installation

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All you have to do is run downloaded .exe file; it will open a WinZip SFX dialog, then
extract it to "C:\Program Files\LANChat" (recommended!), find the file after instalation and
run. You can enable auto run in options then.
That's all.

Using LANChat

Architecture

I'm sure you've seen IRC (who didn't ? :) LANChat is rather different from that chat
network. The main difference is that you don't require a server in your network (local
network, LANChat does not work on the Internet). All users are equal, there are no better and
worse users, operators and bots, no things like that. You can't be kicked by any user, you can
always change the topic, you can't be banned or anything. Remember about the C Class IP
addressing - if you want to use LANChat in other class you have to force the IP number
using setup dialog.

Main window

The main window consists of these elements:

- Chat Box (the biggest one), all private conversation is there
- Edit Box (small on the bottom), you enter your quotes there
- User List (right-top), list of active users
- little light on the right of the Chat Box
- N/F switch under the little light
- 10 buttons on the right

Chat Box

Private conversation is stored in this window, you can scroll it when the text doesn't fit
(only vertically), some system messages are also there. It's a Rich Edit box, so the text there

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can be multi color, underlined, bold and different-font. See the Setup Dialog reference for
details.

Edit Box

You enter your text here, it can be a 'to-say' quote or a system command (see commands
reference for details). You can paste here text from clipboard (using Ctrl+V) but only single-
lined and up to 200 characters. Pressing up-arrow brings previous text and pressing
Alt+F1..F3 gives shortcuts.

User List

Here are the users with an icon on the left determining whether the user is present or not
(see away mode reference for details). You can scroll this box when users don't fit vertically.
When a user's nick is very long it's shorted with "..." characters. Clicking right mouse button
on a user displays a pop-up menu with two options (show window and send pop-up).

Buttons reference

Ten buttons:
- Credits (F2)
- Topic (Session) (F3)
- Setup (F4)
- Minimize (F5)
- Away Yes/No (F6)
- Mute Yes/No (F7)
- Users (F8)
- Mother-Attack ! (F9)
- Vigilant Yes/No
- Chatroom

Credits button

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&nbps; Displays Credits Dialog.

Topic button

Displays Topic (Session) Dialog.

Setup button

Displays Setup Dialog.

Minimize

Pushes LANChat down to the system tray.

Away Yes/No

Indicates your mode (see away reference for details).

Mute Yes/No

Enables and disables sound.

Users

Displays Users Dialog.

Mother Attack

Clears Chat Window and sends an alert to your friends.

Vigilant

Enables/disables vigilant mode.

Chatroom

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Displays Chatroom Dialog.

N/F switch

(N)ormal or (F)rozen state of the vertical scroll.

Away mode

In LANChat you can be present or away. The first mode means that you are free to chat
with any users, you are sitting by the computer and not doing very important things. Away
mode indicates that you are not by the computer, or you are very busy doing something.
When you are going away (by clicking Away Button or selecting Away option in the System-
Tray Pop-Up menu) you should write a reason why you are doing this. After doing it, the
icon on the left of your nick in the User List box will change (depending on your skin file)
and when anybody clicks left mouse button on your Nick your away message (with time
appended to it) will be shown to him. To return from being away just click the button again.
You can't write messages while you're away, and icons in system-tray are changed.

Mute button and vigilant mode

When you are away and your sound is still on, depending on the options in the Setup Dialog
you can still receive Pop-Ups and private messages. To enable mode DND (Do Not Disturb)
you have to click both Mute and Away buttons.
When Vigilant mode is on (bell marked with '!') every message causes LANChat Pro to be
set to front and/or to flash the taskbar. Nice when you are under fullscreen console or other
full screen mode.

Public and private chat

There are two types of chat in LANChat: public and private. On the public channel you are
talking to all users, and your messages can logged. When you are talking privately you are
talking only to your one friend and your messages can't be logged (they can be copied to the

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clipboard.... but you can't help that). Speaking privately is very safe because of different
encryption method (anti-sniffing). To enable private chat you can double-click on a user in
the user list, or click right button on him and then select 'Show window' or enter a "/msg
user" in the chat-box (a system command).

Topic

Every conversation should have its topic. To set (or change it) hit the Topic (Session) button
and change it there, or type "/topic new-topic" system command. The topic is shown in LAN
Chat’s window bar.

Dialogs

Setup Dialog

Your options are stored in the system registry (different for each user). Here is the reference
of options in the Setup Dialog and its Sub-Dialogs.

Nickname

Everybody knows that :), it can be 3-19 characters long.

Color

Yes, this is your color. You can set its RGB values or choose one predefine (using "..."
button). The box on the right is a real-time test of your color.

Female

Mark this if you're female. It changes messages in the Polish version.

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Logging

LAN Chat can write all private messages to log-files yyyymmdd.log. You can disable this if
you want or set another directory (or subdirectory) for them.

Language

LAN Chat is a two-language program: choose yours.

Bring private window to front

When a users sends you a private message and you have his private-window closed it
automatically goes to the front.

Use soundcard

Plays wave files from '\sounds' and '\custom' directories, see sounds reference.

Show time in chat window

Shows messages' time after sender's nick.

Show advanced queries

Notices when a users checks your status or away message.

Show full hours

Notices when it's a full hour (beware not to chat too long :).

Auto-away

Makes you 'away' after X minutes of inactivity (0 disables).

Show Pop-Up-s

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Indicates when you want to receive Pop-Up messages.

Show nicks

You can disable/enable displaying nicks (only color dependent) to save windows' space. Nick
are logged normally.

Shortcuts

You can set here 3 keyboard shortcuts under Alt+F1..3 When you append a @ character at
the end of one, you won't need to press enter (auto-send).

Font

Set your favorite font (don't depend on Windows default).

15 Skin

Does nothing :)

Notify list

When a message contains any of this words it will be underlined or a sound will be played
from the '\custom' directory (if set).

Topic (Session) dialog

You can see some statistics here and change the topic. No reference required :)

Users dialog

Displays detailed user information.

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Private-chat windows

It consists of private-chat-box, edit-box and one button (Pop-Up).

Chartroom dialog

This dialog allows you to maintain chatrooms - create, destroy and add/remove users. You
can have only 1 chatroom and it appears as [yournick] on the users list.

Minimized features

Auto-run minimized

You can set this option to run LANChat Pro always with Windows and minimized.

System tray icons

There are 6 system tray icons:

- normal
- normal - away (when you are away)
- notify (a light-red, indicates that LANChat contains text you didn't read)
- notify - away (dark-red, same as above only when you are away)
- normal - vigilant
- normal - away - vigilant
When LAN Chat is minimized and Mute is off, it beeps on every incoming message using
the PC Speaker and/or plays wave files from '\sounds' and '\custom' directories. Left-clicking
on LANChat icon brings its window back and right-clicking shows a Pop-Up menu. Using
the menu you can restore LANChat window, go away, disable sound or launch some dialogs.

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Customization

Event sound files

You can substitute zero-length wave files from the '\sounds' directory if you want LANChat
to play a sound when an event occurs. The events specification is stored in the
'\sounds\sounds.txt' file. Go there and have a look.

Custom sound files

You can also assign your own sound files (from '\custom') directory to specific words using
Setup Dialog -> Notify. They will be played if the assigned word occurs in a message.

Custom skin files

Yes, from version 4.2 LANChat supports custom graphic files. They are stored in the '\skin'
directory and you are free to change them and/or create yours. See '\skin\skins.txt' file for
more details on creating your own skin files.

Custom plugin (.dll) libraries

LANChat Pro allows you to write plugins as .dll files (the example of such plugin is the
Virtual Barman supplied with LCProv20). Download Plugin Tutorial if you want to write
your own plugins. You'll find everything there.

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Chartrooms
Every user can create its own chatroom (only one). Use the chatroom dialog to maintain
chatrooms (create, delete, add/remove users). It's possible to send a popup to all users in a
chatroom - it appears just like another user in the list.

Commands
Enter /help for commands summary in the LANChat window.

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