DESCRIPTION

The Net::Hotline modules implement a Hotline interface in Perl. Currently,
this includes only Net::Hotline::Client.  Hotline is an internet
client/server system that's sort of a cross between IRC and a traditional
BBS.  See http://www.hotlinesw.com/ for more information.

PREREQUISITES

Net::Hotline has been tested with perl version 5.6.1, MacPerl 5.2.0r4,
and Hotline server versions 1.2.1 and 1.2.3.  It should work fine on any
version of Perl 5 and any 1.2.x version of Hotline, however.

INSTALLATION

The standard incantations should work:

	perl Makefile.PL
	make
	make install

Here are a few common variations on that theme:

* If you don't want to (or can't) install in the system-wide directories,
  you can use PREFIX to install elsewhere.  Example:

	perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=~/perl
	make
	make install

  You'll probably have to create some dummy directories before this works.
  Just look at the error messages and create the directories it says it
  can't find.

* If you're installing on a classic Mac OS system, simply duplicate the
  folder hierarchy inside the distribution's "lib" folder in your MacPerl
  folder. For example, "lib/Net/Hotline/Protocol/Packet.pm" would be
  copied to "<Your MacPerl Folder>/lib/Net/Hotline/Protocol/Packet.pm"
  (You'll have to create any nonexistent folders in the path)

  I'm not sure how to AutoSplit in MacPerl, so what I've been doing is
  commenting out three lines in "Client.pm" to disable AutoLoading.  The
  lines are:

          31: use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';
        1488: __END__

  Just add a "#" character to the beginning of those lines.

EXAMPLES

There are two example scripts in the "Examples" directory.

1. "hlftp.pl" is a simple command line FTP-like Hotline client included
   to demonstrate Net::Hotline::Client's "blocking task mode" (read the
   documentation for an explanation).  Its operation should be familiar
   to anyone who's used ncftp or the regular Unix ftp client.

2. "hibot.pl" is a very simple Hotline "bot" included to demonstrate
   Net::Hotline::Client's "event loop mode" (again, RTFM).  It works a
   lot like hlftp.pl in terms of connecting to servers.  Log the bot
   onto your local Hotline server an message it with the text "help"
   for more information.

BUG REPORTING

Send bug reports to John C. Siracusa (siracusa@mindspring.com)

COPYRIGHT

Copyright(c) 1998-2002 by John C. Siracusa.  All rights reserved.  This
program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the same terms as Perl itself.
