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

EPIC is 100% backwards compatible with ircII because EPIC is ircII.  EPIC
was originally built upon the ircII 2.6 client and has maintained
faithfulness to remain current up to the 2.8.2 release.

EPIC is slightly larger than ircII-4.4 (about 40k on this system), but
that is mostly because of the multitude of new features, the dual ANSI/K&R
compliant function headers, and the large amount of re-written code in an
attempt to make ircII faster, more efficient, and more powerful.

EPIC is derived directly 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 Jeremy Nelson, Jake Kuhon, Robert Chady, 
and a cast of a dozen others.

   You can get a copy of the EPIC client from these URLs:
URL                                                   Maintainer
-------------------------------------------------     ----------
ftp://prbh.org/pub/ircii/                          hop
ftp://ftp.prbh.org/pub/ircii/                      hop
ftp://ftp.magenet.net/pub/epic/                       bruns
ftp://ftp.freenet.de/pub/ftp.epicsol.org/pub/         Michael Haardt
ftp://ftp.leguin.org.uk/pub/mirrors/ftp.epicsol.org/  is
ftp://ftp.burken.nu/pub/irc/clients/epic/             SpaceDump

If you want to mirror the EPIC client, please drop an email to Jeremy Nelson
(jnelson@acronet.net) telling him the host and directory where we can count
on you to keep a copy of the current version of the EPIC client.  The EPIC
client takes about 450k, the help files take about 150k, and from time to
time there are other patches that range from 5k to 30k in size.

A mailing list for all things related to EPIC exists.  Send email to
majordomo@concentric.net with the words "subscribe ircii-epic" in the body
(and nothing else!).  This list exists for bug reports, discussion about and
requests for new features, and anything else that has to do with EPIC.

 * 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 omissions 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 things that required very
   large or slow scripts in the past.

 * EPIC is fully ANSI-compliant:  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 provide both a "old"
   style (K&R) function header and a "new" style (ansi) function header with
   every function and provide every extern function a prototype in a header
   file.

 * 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.