Microsoft Comic Chat

1. Comic Chat Overview

Comic Chat is a new kind of graphical chat program, developed at Microsoft. In recent years, a number of graphical chat programs have appeared for online services and the Internet. Comic Chat takes a different approach to other graphical chat programs, by using a visual representation of conversations based on comics conventions. As users type text into Comic Chat, a comic strip unfolds showing the various participants in the conversation as comics characters, and their utterances in word balloons. Inside of each Comic Chat client is a small, fast expert system for comics generation. On the fly, each Comic Chat client automatically determines a number of aspects related to comics generation. These include:

Which characters to place in each panel
The gestures and expressions for these characters
Where the characters should be placed, and how they should be oriented
The outline form of each word balloon
The layout of word balloons in the panels
When to move on to a new panel
What zoom factor to use for each panel

To get the most current information on Comic Chat, and to download the currently released version look at the Comic Chat page on Microsoft's World Wide Web site: http://www.microsoft.com/ie/comichat/

To contact the Comic Chat team with your suggestions, bug reports, or comments please email us at: comichat@microsoft.com.

2. System Requirements

Microsoft Comic Chat requires the following configuration:

486/66 with 8 MB RAM (Pentium with at least 16 MB RAM is recommended)
Windows® 95 or Windows NT® 4.0 SUR, english versions.
256 color video display
9600 bps modem or faster

3. Connecting to other IRC Chat rooms

If you want to connect to a channel on an IRC chat server that you already know about, you can do this from the Connect dialog box. Enter the server address, port number, and channel name. For example: Comicsrv1.Microsoft.Com, 6667, #Comic_Chat. Currently we support the following channels on our servers:

Server Port Channel

Comicsrv1.Microsoft.Com 6667 #Comic_Chat

Comicsrv1.Microsoft.Com 6667 #Comic_Help

Comicsrv1.Microsoft.Com 6667 #Newbies

Comicsrv1.Microsoft.Com 6667 #Pet_Chat

Comicsrv1.Microsoft.Com 6667 #Sports_Chat

Comicsrv2.Microsoft.Com 6667 #Family_Chat

Comicsrv2.Microsoft.Com 6667 #Internet_Chat

Comicsrv2.Microsoft.Com 6667 #Politics_Chat

Comicsrv2.Microsoft.Com 6667 #Singles_Chat

I didn't write this page. It was much easier to to use it to explain Microsoft's product than it would have been for me to have had to come up with a description of my own. Hope they don't mind

This HTML page was borrowed from Microsoft Corporation at www.microsoft.com

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