EPIC is the (E)nhanced (P)rogrammable (I)RC-II (C)lient.

EPIC4 is a new direction in ircII development.  No longer is EPIC
100% backwards compatable with ircII, but instead we have chosen to
find those things where compatability is undesirable, and fix them.
No gratuitous incompatabilities have been added, but lots of  new
code has been added to make EPIC the best ircII client we could make.

EPIC4 is derived directly from EPIC3, which was itself derived from 
IRC-II which is currently maintained by Matthew Green, and includes 
in whole all the additions included in the "plus" clients by Jeremy 
Nelson and all of the modifications in the "mod" clients by Jake Khuon.  
EPIC is currently maintained by EPIC Software Labs (ESL), comprised of 
a couple of dozen people.

A lot of information about EPIC can be gotten at the EPIC Software Labs
home page at <http://www.epicsol.org/>

The more or less official list of sites that mirror the EPIC source code
is at <http://www.epicsol.org/ftp.phtml>

If you want to mirror EPIC on your ftp site, please visit the above URL
and contact the Mirror List Maintainer for more details.  You do not need
specific permission to mirror EPIC, but we would like to know if you are
mirroring, so we can put you on the list!


WHAT EPIC IS AND IS NOT:
-----------------------
EPIC is completely safe:  There are no hidden trap doors.  We value your 
trust, and will not do anything to abuse it.

EPIC is programmable:  While ircII does contain a wide range of commands 
and functions, several glaring ommisions exist, which EPIC has attempted 
to fill, making the ircII language complete, precise, and efficient.

EPIC supports bots:  We do not agree with those who feel that script bots 
are all the evil of irc, and we feel that scripts bots must not be 
squelched by those who have the stranglehold of control on irc.  EPIC will
support bots for as long as we maintain it.

EPIC is not anal retentive:  EPIC allows you to do EVERYTHING that the irc 
protocol (RFC 1459) allows, and does not place any arbitrary restrictions 
upon you.  EPIC *does* fully comply with the protocol as shipped and does 
not allow you to do anything that is deemed illegal by the protocol.

EPIC is complete:  EPIC supplies over 100 various functions and commands
which allow you to do things very quickly that required very large or slow 
scripts in the past.

EPIC uses ANSI function declarations.  Most current versions of the stock 
client do have full prototyping for all functions, which has the same net 
effect as the work we have done.  We, however, chose to move all our function 
headers to the ANSI style, rather than relying on K&R with function 
prototypes.  We provide a function declaration in a header file for every
extern function.

EPIC is getting smaller and faster.  Changes are continually underway
to provide a faster client with more functionality while using less CPU 
cycles.  While these may appear to be conflicting goals, the whole point 
of the EPIC project is to provide the best client that runs as well as 
can be managed.

The EPIC mailing list is list@epicsol.org.  It is run by MailMan.  The list 
should be considered *low traffic*, and is used primarily for product release 
announcements and public bug reports.  Everything else should be taken to 
private email.
