DiaWebLog
=========

DiaWebLog is an interface between IRC and a weblog.  Members of the
IRC channel interact with a bot to create a community weblog.  See the
MESH DiaWebLog at http://www.diaweblog.org for an example.  This
DiaWebLog is created by the users of #mesh on irc.openprojects.net.

DiaWebLog requires Perl and several Perl modules.  See "Requirements"
below and the INSTALL file for more information.

DiaWebLog was written by David Helder (dhelder@umich.edu).  It is a
project of MESH, Michigan Engineering Software and Hardware, a student
group at the University of Michigan that works on fun projects
(http://mesh.eecs.umich.edu).

DiaWebLog is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
This means it's free, you can share it with your friends, but it's not
our fault if it breaks your computer.  See COPYING for more
information.

Text files:

	README		This file
	INSTALL		Installation instructions
	COMMANDS	DiaWebLog bot commands 
	COPYING		GNU General Public License (GPL)
	NEWS		Changes since the last release
	TODO		Plans for future releases
	diaweblog.conf	Example configuration file


Example
-------

An example exchange from #mesh is below.  diaweblog is the #mesh
DiaWebLog bot.  DavidH and kcm are humans.

--> diaweblog (dhelder@misc.eecs.umich.edu) has joined #mesh
<diaweblog> MESH DiaWebLog: http://www.diaweblog.org
<diaweblog> See http://www.diaweblog.org
<DavidH> Paper CD Case, http://www.papercdcase.com
<diaweblog> s: Paper CD Case [#609]
<DavidH> s: Make origami CD cases
<kcm> s: rock!
<DavidH> woohoo
<DavidH> diaweblog: update
<diaweblog> DiaWebLog updated (http://www.diaweblog.org)

This will add an item to the top of www.diaweblog.org that looks
something like this:

  * Paper CD Case
  <http://www.papercdcase.com>
  posted by (DavidH) on 2001-07-22 21:24:28 [#609]

    (DavidH) Make origami CD cases
    (kcm) rock!

Here's what happened:

DavidH said a URL.  diaweblog noticed this and added an item called
'Paper CD Case' with the URL http://www.diaweblog.org.  It assigned it
the letter s.  DavidH and kcm added comments to the item by addressing
its letter.  When they said things normally, they did not get added.
DavidH updated the webpage by directly telling diaweblog to update.

Check out #mesh on irc.openprojects.net for a live demonstration.


Requirements
------------

DiaWebLog requires:

	Perl 5
	Net::IRC Perl module
	XML::Parser  Perl module
	Unicode::String Perl module
	Unicode::Map8 Perl module
	LWP Perl module

Perl 5 and the Perl modules are fairly common.  Packages for these
modules are available for FreeBSD, Debian, and many other Unix
distributions.


Props
-----

The MESH DiaWebLog was inspired by the original DWL
(http://monkeyfist.com/articles/576) written by Bijan Parsia of the
Monkeyfist Collective (www.monkeyfist.com).


-----
Copyright (C) 2001-2002 David Helder