Aim

The Oxid beginning

Oxid has been imagined to fill the actual lacks of good IRC clients in the world of free softwares, usable on most platforms and operating systems. In addition of the lack of interoperability between the clients, there was a crucial lack about the user interfaces of these clients which impose the using of some graphical library, or imposing the graphical or text mode.

Oxid's aims

After the Oxid's birth, this client will be able to solve these differents problems.

The actual and most important problem is the need of the user to adapt to the program he is using, but sometimes the user won't have the will to discover an unknow program.

Oxid : a user-adaptative client

There are many options to adapt a program to a user :

Material adapability : a program must be able to adapt the user's hardware (console mode, graphical mode, with or without a mouse, ...)
Visual adaptability : a program must the clearest, the most intuitive as possible ; the software's appearance must be hardly settable, to be the most adaptative to the user.
Textual adaptatibility : a program must be understandable by everybody. The internationalization is really important in computer scient, and it's unacceptable that a user must learn a language to be able to use a software.
Interoperability : A program, even if it brings something new, won't be most used, if the user must forget all the work he've done on the program the other one rplaces. The fact that this new program recognizes les functions of the other programs he is replacing is very important and necessary. So, the user will be able to use his work or his tools with the new program, and won't have to recreate all the past works, generating a waste of time and a cost which can be considerable.

Oxid and the material adaptability

Our aim is to create a client the less dependant of the hardware. So, we will find in this client many compilation possibilities. So, Oxid will be able to work on a not powerful computer, on which a X terminal can't work, if a keyboard and a monitor are avaible to communicate with the program. For the computers using a X terminal, the client will be able to use the graphical mode performances with a graphical appearance, the using of the keyboard and the mouse to facilitate communications (mouse is just an option).
The program doesn't need a lot of disk space, and can have a little memory occupation.

Oxid and the visual adaptability

One more time, Oxid will be able to adaptate to your computer. Oxid will not use only one graphical library, but the one you'll choose. At the actual time, Oxid supports four differtent libraries, and this number will increase with the time. Among the avaible libraries, there are :

The NCurses library : it allows a convivial interface in text mode. It princiapl caracteristic is that this library exists on a lot of operating systems.
The QT library : this librarie allows us to have a nice graphical interface, fully settable with themes. One more time, this library is avaible on most operating systems, and is very handy.
The Gtl library : this library allows us to have a graphical interface too. It is no as avaible as the Qt library, but lot of users like to use this one.
The Windows library : this last one allows us to use the full power of the Windows Application Programmation Interface (API). By definition, it is only avaible on Windows and is intended to all users of the operating system.

Oxid and the textual adaptability

As every AP²C programs, Oxid will use internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n) functionnalities, allowing the program to use your language, if the appropriate traductions tables are existing. The user will not have to translate and will be able to use the program naturally.
If no translation for your language exists, it's possible to take part to the Oxid translation. It is really simple, you don't have to know programing, or the program's operation. No external program, or Oxid's sources will be useful in this task. Your work will allows other persons to use Oxid using their own language without any difficulties if they speak the same language than yours. (for more informations, please have a look to the Oxid's documentation).

The interoperability

One of the most important thing of Oxid is his interoperability. Oxid supports a lot of functions of the most important actual IRC clients, as the compatibility with the scripts or plug-ins of the others IRC clients. By this interoperability, it's possible to load a script or a plug-in written for one of these IRC clients under Oxid without any problem. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the compatible clients :

X-Chat plug-ins (C/C++) support
X-Chat scripts (TCL, Perl, Python) support
mIRC plug-ins (C/C++) support
mIRC scripts (mIRC own pseudo-language) support
irssi/Bitch-X plug-ins (C/C++) support
irssi/BitchX scripts support

It's important to notice that the usage of plug-ins is done naturally without any new compilation

A full interoperability is done about the usage of commands, functionnalities, possibilities and power of the software.

Oxid's other strong points

Oxid is not only a simple IRC client regrouping the power of each other IRC clients. This client offers to the users only to bring them innovations. Among it, we can quote the possibility to integrate new communications protocols, and over all to bring to the world of free softwares, powerful and robust programs to counter the non-free softwares market : Computer scient is an art, and not a trade !