--- /dev/null
+ Servus, an IRC bot
+
+This file documents (briefly) the development and usage of the Servus
+bot from the perspective of the bot operator. Servus.html contains the
+user-facing documentation.
+
+* Invocation *
+
+"python acrobat.py Servus-chiark" is the basic usage. For long-running
+instances, you probably want to run using nohup (and redirecting
+stdout somewhere sensible). Equally, if you want to change the owner,
+server, channel, nickname and the like, you can edit
+Servus-chiark.py or append the relevant overrides to the command line,
+e.g.:
+python acrobat.py Servus-chiark nickname=testbot channel=\#test owner=MyNick
+
+* Known Issues *
+
+- Servus doesn't see things people emit with /me. This is a problem
+ for the URL-tracking code, and needs fixing.
+
+- Servus will only emit ASCII. It's not clear to me that this is
+ wrong, but if we move to everyone having UTF8-capable irc clients,
+ it would be nice to fix it such that it emits ASCII when it can and
+ UTF8 otherwise
+
+- Servus can only deal with being on a single channel at once
+
+* Dependencies *
+
+Servus depends on some things that aren't in standard python (or
+included in its source). You can install them system-wide or add the
+--prefix command to setup.py install (and make sure PYTHONPATH is
+sensible).
+
+i) oauth2
+
+https://github.com/simplegeo/python-oauth2
+
+in debian stable as python-oauth2
+
+ii) httplib2
+
+http://code.google.com/p/httplib2/
+
+in debian oldstable+ as python-httplib2
+
+iii) simplejson
+
+http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/simplejson
+
+or in standard python2.6 and above
+
+iv) python-twitter (which requires all of the above)
+
+http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/
+