In irc-mode you will have two buffers, the command buffer and the dialogue buffer. You will be typing in the command buffer, and the dialogue will appear in the dialogue buffer. The command buffer roughly corresponds to the one-line area in the bottom in the traditional clients.
In the command buffer, the lines you type will be sent to the channel you are on when you press the return or the linefeed key. You may freely edit them or do any regular editing tricks that you may want to do. If the line exceeds the right margin, it will be wrapped around, so you can finish the line and send it when you're ready.
The cursor keys move you around in the buffer. If you want to say something again, just find it in the command buffer, move the cursor on it, and press the return key.
You can use the regular GNU Emacs commands in the command buffer for inserting text from elsewhere, like insert-file (C-x i) for adding other files, C-u M-! for inserting output of shell commands and so forth. Notice that these will NOT be sent to the channel before you go on each line and press return. You can send output of shell command to IRC by executing irchat-Command-exec (C-c !).
The commands for controlling IRC are available in the command buffer. See section "IRC Commands" for info.
The other buffer is the dialogue buffer. The conversation you have had in IRC will be stored there. Notice that this buffer is not saved anywhere unless you explicitly tell emacs to do so. This feature lets you see what has been spoken about on the channel while you have been away, for example. There is a number of commands for the dialogue buffer. There are also a couple of commands for controlling the dialogue buffer from the command buffer, namely C-c C-f, C-c DEL and C-c C-l. C-c C-f (or C-c F) will freeze the dialogue buffer so that you can read the text there and scroll the buffer. C-c DEL will scroll dialogue buffer one windowful back and C-c C-l will refresh the irchat buffers. To scroll dialogue forward one screenful you can use C-SPC or if you have only two buffers visible you can use the default emacs scroll-other-window M-C-v.
Notice that there will be a capital F on the modeline of the dialogue buffer if the dialogue buffer is frozen. Press C-c C-f again to unfreeze it. A capital A signifies that you've marked yourself as being AWAY.
In the dialogue buffer there is a special keymap, which doesn't allow
for typing.
The commands there are:
There is also a mode for debugging irchat, which you can use if you want to familiarize yourself with the server-client traffic or think that irchat is handling something wrong. You invoke it with C-c C-d and end with another C-c C-d.
CTCP (Client-To-Client-Protocol) is bound on prefix C-c C-c, it has
7 (seven) different commands: