X-Chat 2 for Windows
The official X-Chat for Windows version is now shareware (30 days trial), but X-Chat is still open-source and licensed under GPL. So there are a few free non-official builds, and mine is among them. You can find more in Wikipedia.
X-Chat-WDK
XChat-WDK is a patchset for XChat SVN which allows for building on Windows using the Windows Driver Kit. This results in binaries usable across all versions of Windows starting from XP (read why).
In human language it means it’s a free build of XChat for Windows. Since XChat is open source it’s perfectly legal, and all you have to do is download, install and run!
Besides XChat-WDK, you can find builds of various open source libraries as well. Most of them are used by XChat-WDK itself.
X-Chat Features
X-Chat has two good features of usability: colored nicknames and alignment by text as opposed to alignment by nicks. When you read text, it’s enough for eyes to notice the colors of nicknames, which they can do when they are focused to somewhere else near, and you may know at once who is writing. Colors are unobtrusive and there just 6 of them—not to burden your short-term memory. And eyes don’t have to search for ends of nicknames, they can start reading text at once when text is aligned by the beginning.
Video How To
This X-Chat for Windows version features: 42 language translations; encrypted connections using OpenSSL 0.9.8j; native IPv6 support on Windows with IPv6 stack; Perl, Ruby and Tcl language interface plugins for scripting; Winamp, DNS and EXEC binary plugins; various themes with graphical theme and font utility. It is compiled using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 Architect Edition on Windows XP SP2. To enable language interface plugins, you need to install respective language distributions (see Download page). Comparing to official version, I use dynamically linked (a bunch of separate .dll files) GTK+ (graphical user interface library) as opposed to statically linked GTK+, where everything is in one xchat.exe file. The advantage is that you can use different themes, and not the one which has been compiled into that one xchat.exe file. GTK+ libraries are from Alex Shaduri GTK+ Runtime for Windows, so you also get GTK+ theme engines, themes and graphical theme preferences utility (in Start Menu).
