# $Id$

                                 -------------
                                 -- Infobot --
                                 -------------

INTRODUCTION
	This bot is based upon blootbot, which was a fork of infobot-0.44.2 by
Kevin Lenzo <[email protected]>, which is now officially rebranded back to
infobot!  The basis of infobot is still there but _many_ wild features have
been added.  Along the way, many issues were spotted in the original
infobot source and fixed in this version. Many new bugs have been added as well.
Thanks to kevin for bringing infobot in the first place.


FEATURES
	* Additional information stored with factoids. (factinfo)
	* Wide range of statistics for Bot, Factoids, IRC, Debian
	  (status, factstats, ircstats, chanstats, cmdstats)
	* Advanced topic management
	* Improved factoid search, allowing search by key or value
	* Freshmeat support (freshmeat.net)
	* Debian Contents and Packages, search and info
	* ChanServ/NickServ (freenode) support
	* WWW-Search (eg: google for BLAH) (NOTE: Currently broken)
	* Slashdot, Kernel, RSS and Freshmeat auto-update announcements
	* Units conversion (provided by external "units" program)


DESIGN
	- Modularity. Ability to disable IRC or Factoid support
	- Funky pseudo Module autoloader support
	- Modules called via Forker() to avoid blocking
    - Non blocking logs
    - Seen data periodicaly flushed for efficiency


HISTORY
	As of 0.99pre1, blootbot supports mysql database in the hope to
increase performance and to avoid borked over dbm's which occurred when
the bot crashed (??). The mysql code is far larger (or perhaps twice
as many functions) than expected even though a few functions were needed
for DBM due to lack of table deficiencies.

	As of 1.0.0pre1, blootbot takes advantage of Net::IRC. The
change over was fairly comfortable (95% clean). Just minor problems here
and there, mostly debugging and getting it right.

	As of 1.0.0RC2, the old style DBM (Berkeley) has been ported
back. It should work in all but 3 specific (countdown, factstats unreq)
cases. preliminary pgsql support has been added but someone with pgperl
knowledge needs to fix it up or at least unify the module with mysql.

	As of 1.5.0, blootbot was rebranded back to infobot.


INSTALLATION
  - Read the included INSTALL file


NOTICE
	Be warned that this bot consumes quite a lot of memory upon start
up and during usage. Right now, 7.4megs is used for old'ish perl, 8.3megs
with perl 5.005. fork() is used but don't be alarmed at the memory usage
as fork(), as I was told, uses COW (copy on write).

	WARNING: enabling wingate support may involve complaints of some
sort, probably because the telnet connection isn't closed properly.
However, these people do not realize the potential of open wingates.

	Please beta test it and report bugs as I have not had the time to
test all modifications properly (and extensively).  Suggestions are
welcomed.


MODIFICATIONS
	All modifications are that of the blootbot author unless otherwise
specified, like none.  See 'ChangeLog' for details.  A list of future
features listed in 'TODO'.

	See 'USAGE' for complete list of commands with description
(FIXME) and examples (FIXME).  Yes, it is incomplete.  It is better for
you to find the cookies than for me to hand-feed them to you ;)

	See 'EXAMPLES' for various usage of factoids and "hidden"
variables.  If you're hardcore, check out 'CommandStubs.pl' and
'UserExtras.pl' for cool features.

	topic [help]		- Topic help.
	topic add <topic>	- Append <topic> to the current topic.
	topic del <#>		- Purge topic ID <#> from current topic.
	topic list		- List broken down summary of current topic.
	topic mod s/old/new/	- Modify the topic using regex.
				- Now supports , and # as delimiters.
	topic mv <1> <type> <2>	- <type>:
					before - Move <1> before <2>
					after  - Move <1> after <2>
					swap   - Swap <1> and <2>
	topic shuffle		- Jumble the subtopics.

	topic history		- Show previous channel topics.
	topic restore <#>	- Restore channel topic to <#> on history
				  #list.

==> Individual commands: NEW
	(lobotomy|bequiet)	-- [o] silence the bot.
	(unlobotomy|benoisy)	-- [o] unsilence the bot.

	set <param> <value>	-- ...
	unset <param>		-- ...


NOTES
	To administrate/control the bot remotely, this can only be done
through DCC CHAT. /chat <BOT NICK>.  All commands must be prepended by
'.' otherwise it is sent to the bot chat net


UNTESTED:
	- user statistics shown by 'seen'.
	- User Information Services.
	- new wingate caching/file-read code.
	- disabling IRC/factoid support code.
	- PGSql support needs to be more thoroughly tested.


CONTRIBUTIONS
	jCommons, is, netgod, mu and Mercury for attempting to break my
modifications, aswell as giving suggestions and ideas in the early
development stages. Bashing of modifications courtesy of larne, irq, lilo
and \broken.

	mu@freenode for the SAR (=~ s///) and Topic history patch.

	someone emailed me a patch to fix up telnet but I accidently
deleted the message together with the patch after replying to the guy. I
hope to get that same guy to re-send me the patch...

	MbM@freenode sent a patch to clean up behaviour of factoids
(adding, removing, modifying).  Thanks.


CONTACT
	Contributions of a patch, or anything, can be sent to
<[email protected]>

Some Documentation is on the website. Please see it for details or
visit: http://infobot.sourceforge.net/


IRC
	If your looking to hang out on IRC, feel free. We can be found
in the #infobot channel on irc.freenode.net. See you there!


# vim:ts=4:sw=4:expandtab:tw=80