While preparing to include this package in unstable portage, I discovered that it is quite lacking in new user documentation, so this is my experience with getting started with pork-0.3.0.

The first thing to do after merging pork is to generate your ~/.pork directory, and put the default porkrc file in it.

$ mkdir ~/.pork
$ cp /usr/share/pork/porkrc

Then, simply start pork and type /connect [screenname] to start using pork.  If you are familiar with ircII the pork interface should be pretty managable.  Most of what I write from here on can be found by reading through the /usr/share/pork/help dirs, and the porkrc file, but for a quick start here ya go:

TAB switches between the buddy list window and the chat window when the buddy list is shown
/blist show
/blist hide show and hide the buddy list
in the buddy list window, enter switches to a buddy, OR collapses/expands a group.

In the chat window, enter sends.

This is FAR from complete in how to use pork, to find a full listing of commands supported do

$ find /usr/share/pork/help

To get the usage info about a specific command simply cat it's file out of the listing generated above.

Things that I discovered: pork has a hard time syncing LARGE buddy lists on first connect.  If you find that not all of your buddy list is downloaded from the server, you can actually use gaim to sync your list, and then copy that list verbatim from ~/.gaim/[screenname].0.blist to ~/.pork/[screenname]/buddy_list and restart pork to get your whole buddy list.  Note that gaim uses all caps for the [screenname] and pork uses all lowercase.

I hope this little document helps you get started using pork quickly, enjoy!