Users' Quick-Start Guide

Introduction

What is Temple?

Temple is an IRC infobot. It stores pieces of information - 'calcs' - for retrieval at a later time. Calcs can be added, deleted and modified at any time, via commands given over the IRC network.

This manual assumes that you have access to a Temple bot. If you're unsure whether you have access, or you have any problems with the commands described here, contact the bot's administrator.

Temple accepts commands via both IRC channels and private messages. If you query it in the channel, it will reply in the channel, and likewise for messages.

The calc command

The most basic Temple command is 'calc', which is used to retrieve a previously stored calc. Its use is pretty trivial:

calc factoid

factoid represents the name given to the calc - its label. Try the command 'calc test' - Temple should reply with something along the lines of

[test] test

If it says

No entry for "test".

don't worry, it just means that a calc with that name doesn't exist right now.

Creating and deleting calcs: the mkcalc and rmcalc commands

The mkcalc command is used to create a new calc. Its syntax is again very simple:

mkcalc name = value

The name is the calc's label - the word used with the calc command to retrieve its text. For example, to create the calc 'test' as seen in the last section, we would use the command:

mkcalc test = test

After receiving this command, Temple will respond with a message similar to:

"test" added.

The opposite of the mkcalc command - rmcalc - is used to delete calcs. Its syntax, if you haven't guessed already, is:

rmcalc name

Where name is the name of the calc to delete.

Owners and Rights

Now would be a good time to discuss a non-command feature: owners of calcs. Every calc stored in Temple has, among other things, two pieces of information associated with it - its creator and its owner. When a calc is created, both of these are set to the person who created the calc. The owner of a calc is the only person (other than Admins) who can modify or delete that calc - e.g., use the rmcalc command on it. It is possible for a calc's owner to change over time, but the creator remains constant until the calc is deleted.

You can find out these values using the owner command; for example:

owner test

Temple will then reply with something like:

"test" is owned by larne, and was created by larne.

Searching the database: the apropos and apropos2 commands

After using Temple for a while, you might find that you can't remember the name of a calc, but you know part of it, or what text is stored in it. With these two commands, you can search the calc database by name or value. The apropos command is used to search by name; its syntax is:

apropos search-term

Where search-term is the text to search for. For example, if we couldn't remember how to spell "test", but knew it began with "te", we might use the command:

apropos te

Temple would then reply with something like:

1 match(s) for "te": "test".

The apropos2 command is identical, except that it searches the value of the calc - that is, the text associated with it.

Other commands

The commands discussed so far should be enough to get started using Temple. If you want to know more, refer to chapter 3 (Command Reference Manual); it contains complete descriptions of every command available in Temple. Particularly useful commands include sedcalc, owncalc, tell, and lncalc.