IRCX

IRCX (Internet Relay Chat eXtensions) is an extension to the IRC protocol developed by Microsoft.cite web
last = Abraham
first = Dalen
title = Extensions to the Internet Relay Chat Protocol (IRCX)
publisher = IETF
date = June 1998
url = http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pfenning-irc-extensions-04
accessdate = 2008-09-04]

IRCX defines ways to use SASL authentication to authenticate securely to the server, channel properties/metadata, multilingual support that can be queried using the enhanced "LISTX" command (to find a channel in your language), an additional user level (so there are three levels: owners, hosts, and voices), specific IRC operator levels, and full support for UTF-8 (in nicknames, channel names, and so on). IRCX is fully backwards compatible with IRC; the new features are downgraded to something a standard IRC client can see (and UTF-8 nicknames are converted to hexadecimal).

IRCX was originally supported on Microsoft Exchange 5.5 (in place of the old Microsoft Chat protocol, which is a binary protocol) and a module was available for Microsoft Exchange 2000.cite web
title = Exchange Chat Features/IRCX
publisher = Microsoft
date = April 19, 2004
url = http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc767140.aspx
accessdate = 2008-09-04]

Microsoft has since stopped distributing software that supports IRCX, and morphed its protocol into the protocol used on the MSN Chat network, which is not standardized or openly available for use (however, its usage is very similar to IRCX and therefore most IRCX clients are able to connect to MSN Chat without much modification).

Microsoft started to put IRCX through a standardisation process with the IETF by publishing 4 Internet Drafts of their protocol, but the standard was never ratified. Because of this, every IRCX implementation bases itself on these draft papers, of which version 4 is the latest.

References

See Also

Internet Relay Chat

External Links

* [http://www.ignition-project.com/ircxdraft/] The latest IRCX draft in DocBook format
* [http://www.ignition-project.com/pages/projects/ignitionserver/ ignitionServer]
* [http://www.officeirc.com/products/default.asp?product=server OfficeIRC Server]
* [http://www.mooircd.org/ MooIRCd]
* [http://sourceforge.net/projects/prjpyrcx pyRCX]