Chat Operation

Each time you start Private Chat, you will see an empty window with a menu bar and a tool bar. You can either click on the white icon - first one on the left end of the tool bar - that looks like a page with the top right corner folded down or select "File - New" from the menu bar. That will cause a dialog box to appear so you can enter connection information. If you leave the "User Name" blank empty, the program will supply "NoName" for the user name.

For secure communications, you must enter a pass phrase or word in the "Passphrase" blank that only you and the persons with whom you wish to communicate know. For testing, you can use the supplied Test passphrase. Bear in mind that every copy of Private Chat has the same test passphrase. That means if you connect to a server using it, anyone else connected to that server also using the test passphrase can read every message you send. You can also read the messages they send, and you will see them in your tree control on the left side of the Private Chat main frame window.

The pre-entered server name is "rixgroup.com", which is running on my machine. You are free to use it (when I haven't forgotten to restart it after installing security updates). I manage to keep it available better than 90% of the time. If you start a server on your own machine, you can select "localhost" from the drop-down list. This is a convenient way of testing the chat client.

The "Group ID" and "Email Address" blanks you can leave empty, they aren't used in this version. I had plans for them, but haven't implemented them yet.

The next blank down is for "Message Channel". For the technically-minded, this is the port or socket number that will be used. My server is running on 28000, which is the pre-entered value. If connecting to another server, you must use the number that server is accepting connections on.

Below that is the "File Transfer Channel", which is pre-set to 28005. This is the number that your Private Chat will accept connections on to receive a file. Some firewalls like ZoneAlarm will ask you if Private Chat can act as a server if a file transfer to you is started. You must answer YES or the file transfer will fail. You and the person trying to send a file to you can NOT use the same File Transfer Channel, the transfer will not start.

Private Chat has other options you can use, but changing them is not required to be able to use the program. If you do change the other options on the second tab of the "Options" dialog, the people you correspond with must make the same changes. If they don't, you won't even see them in the tree control much less be able to read their messages or they read yours.

Look in the Private Chat help files for additional information.