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YTalk(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual YTalk(1)
NAME
ytalk - A multi-user chat program.
SYNOPSIS
ytalk [-x] [-s] username...
DESCRIPTION
YTalk V3.0 Patch Level 2
YTalk is in essence a multi-user chat program. It works
almost exactly like the UNIX talk program and even communi-
cates with the same talk daemon(s), but YTalk allows for
multiple connections.
The username field may be formatted in several different
ways:
name - some user on your machine
name@host - some user on a different machine
name#tty - some user on a particular terminal
name#tty@host - some user on a particular tty on a
different machine
name@host#tty - same as "name#tty@host"
You can specify multiple user names on the command line, ie:
ytalk george fred@hissun.edu marc@grumpy.cc
The -x option disables the X11 interface (described below).
The -s option starts your YTalk window in a shell.
For each user on the command line, YTalk will attempt to
connect to the talk daemon on the specified user's host and
determine if that user has left an invitation for you to
call. If not, YTalk leaves an invitation for him and tells
his talk daemon to send an announcement to his screen.
There is not yet a dedicated YTalk daemon, but there will
be. Right now, YTalk is able to communicate with BOTH
existing versions of UNIX talk daemons. For any particular
host, YTalk will attempt to communicate with a talk daemon
the caller's host also supports. If the two hosts have no
daemon in common, then UNIX talk will not function at all,
but a connection is possible through (and only through)
YTalk.
Once a connection has been established between two users,
they can chat back and forth to their hearts' content. The
connection is terminated when one of them hits control-C or
selects quit off the main menu.
YTalk is perfectly compatible with UNIX talk and they can
even converse with each other without any problems.
However, many of the features of YTalk can only operate when
you are connected to a user who is also using YTalk. For
the rest of this document, it will be assumed that all con-
nected users are using YTalk, unless otherwise stated.
If you specified more than one user on the YTalk command
line, then YTalk will process and add each user to the
conversation as they respond to your invitation. As each
new user enters the conversation, the screen is further sub-
divided into smaller and smaller windows, one for each con-
nected user. Right now, the number of connected users is
limited by the number of lines on your terminal (or window),
for each connected user needs at least three lines.
YTalk does implement primitive support of the X11 Windowing
System. If the environment variable DISPLAY is set, then
YTalk attempts to connect to that X server. Further details
about the X11 interface (and how to turn it off) are given
below.
As each new user is added to the conversation, YTalk will
transmit information about that user to all other connected
YTalk users so that their screens will also subdivide and
incorporate the new user. If the new user is using UNIX
talk, then information about him will NOT be transmitted,
for his screen would be unable to accept multiple connec-
tions. I have given brief thought to allowing at least the
output of UNIX talk users to be transmitted to all connected
YTalk users, but I have not written any code to do so. Note
that even though UNIX talk cannot handle multiple connec-
tions, it is still possible for YTalk to handle multiple
UNIX "talk" connections. For example, george (using YTalk)
could communicate with fred and joe (both using UNIX talk),
but fred and joe would be unaware of each other. The best
way to understand the limitations that UNIX "talk" places on
YTalk is to test various connections between the two and see
how things work.
ESCAPE MENU
Whenever you are using YTalk, you can hit the ESCAPE key to
bring up a menu which at this moment has these options:
a: add a user
d: delete a user
o: options
s: shell
u: user list
w: output user to file
q: quit
By choosing option "a", you are given the opportunity to
type the name of any user you wish to include into the
conversation. Again, YTalk will accept an invitation from
that user if an invitation exists, or will leave an invita-
tion and ring the given user.
By choosing option "d", you can select the name of a connec-
tion to terminate.
By choosing option "o", you can view and/or modify any of
the YTalk options. See the OPTIONS section below for a list
of YTalk options.
By choosing option "s", you can invoke a shell in your YTalk
window. All other users will see what happens in your
shell. YTalk will automatically resize your window down to
the size of the smallest window you are connected to, in
order to ensure that all users always see the same thing.
The "u" option displays a list of connected and unconnected
users, as well as their window sizes and what version of
talk software they are running.
By choosing option "w", you can select any connected user
and type the name of a file, and all further output from
that user will be dumped to the specified file. The file,
if it exists, will be OVERWRITTEN. By choosing "w" and the
same user again, further output to the file will be ter-
minated.
Oh, one other thing: when user A attempts to ytalk to user
B, but user B is already ytalking with user C, user A's
YTalk program will realize that user B is already using
YTalk, and will communicate with user B's YTalk program
directly in order to initialize the conversation. User B
will see a nice windowed message like:
Do you wish to talk with user A?
and he will be prompted for a yes/no answer. This, in my
opinion, is much preferable to blitting the announcement
message and messing up user B's screen.
RUNTIME OPTIONS
When you select Options off of the main menu, you are given
the opportunity to edit the YTalk options. The current
opThese are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Netfuture.ch.