Talking in the Internet part II
by Eric De La Cruz Lugo <[email protected]>
As we mentioned before (see the Talk in the
Internet article in last month's issue), the "talk" program
is very simple and useful when we want to talk with one person in private,
but what if you want to talk with two or more people and you want the
same privacy?
Of course you can say, "Hey, I can do that! I just need to log into
my account more than once and change between terminals!" This, of
course, is true, but in this article, we will talk about a program
called ytalk. This program has several features (and
advantages over the other two solutions) that the talk command does not.
Keep reading.
What it is and how does it work?
Well as the "long port description" says:
YTalk is in essence a multi-user chat program. It works
almost exactly like the UNIX talk program and even communicates
with the same talk daemon(s), but YTalk allows for multiple
connections.
In other words, ytalk is a multi-user talk program that is compatible
with the older UNIX talk clients and daemons.
When using ytalk, the screen splits into two, three, or more windows
-- one for each user with whom you are talking.
YTalk was originally written by Britt Yenne in 1990. Currently, Roger
Espel Llima is the maintainer of the program. The current version is
3.1.1.
YTalk has several useful features, such as:
- Multiple simultaneous connections, compatible with talk, as well as
previous versions of ytalk.
- Text-based or X11 interface -- your choice.
- Contents in windows scroll, not wrap around.
- You can start shells inside ytalk, type commands, and let your
partners see the output from them.
- Since ytalk is 8-bit clean, you can type all those cool accented
characters ;-)
- You can save any side of the current conversation, including, of
course, yours.
- You can define aliases for addresses of people to ring or for
host names to ring them on.
- Support for virtual hosts and multi-homed machines.
- And other features :-)
See the man page for usage options.
Now let's suppose that you want to communicate with two friends (in
this case we will see a ytalk session between three users called
Eric (of course this is a mere coincidence) in Merida, Yucatan,
Mexico, and, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, the user accounts are
(for this example):
In Guadalajara: [email protected]
In Merida: [email protected]
In Merida: [email protected]
The following session was originally in Spanish, but I've translated
for you. We start the ytalk program by typing the following at the
command prompt:
% ytalk [email protected]
After this, the screen changes and shows the following:
----------= Ytalk version 3.1.1 =----------
[Ringing eric...]
After that, the user eric on the labna.itmerida.mx host can type his
response. When the connection is made, the screen splits into two
windows, as shown below:
----------= Ytalk version 3.1.1 =----------
Hi Eric, how is everything in Merida?
--------= [email protected] =---------
Everything its okay here, it's a little hot, and its
raining right now!
Now suppose you want to talk with the user eric on the host
falco1.falcomex.com. In order to add this user to the current talk,
we need to use the correct option in the ytalk. To bring up the menu,
press the [Esc] key. It should look like this:
----------= Ytalk version 3.1.1 =----------
Hi Eric how, is everything in Merida?
#########################
# Main Menu #
# #
# a: add a user #
# d: delete a user #
# k: kill all #
# o: options #
# s: shell #
# u: user list #
# w: output user to file#
# q: quit #
#########################
--------= [email protected] =---------
Everything its okay here, it's a little hot, and it's
raining right now!
In this menu, there are several options, which are quite descriptive.
In this case, we are going to add a user. For this we press the letter
for the option we want in this case the a. When we press it,
the ytalk program asks for the user we want to add. Here we put the
address for [email protected], as shown below:
----------= YTalk version 3.11 =----------
Hi Eric how is everything in Merida?
#########################
# Main Menu #
# #
# a: add a user #
#########################################
# Add Which User? #
# > [email protected] #
#########################################
# w: output user to file#
# q: quit #
#########################
--------= [email protected] =---------
Everything its okay here, it's a little hot, and it's
raining right now!
The result of this is shown below:
----------= YTalk version 3.1.1 =----------
Hi Eric, how is everything in Merida?
I'm okay Eric, how is your day in Falco?
--------= [email protected] =---------
Everything its okay here, it's a little hot, and it's
raining right now!
--------= [email protected] =-------
Hi Eric, how are you?
As you can see, we have several users talking just like in on IRC,
but we still have the same privacy, like in the talk program.
I hope this introduction to the ytalk program will be of some use for
those of you that enjoy talking with other people on the Internet.
Keep in touch, and have a good time ytalking! :-)
References
Eric De La Cruz Lugo works for the "CONSTRUCTORA KEPLER S.A. DE C.V.", a
Construction company in Mexico. Right know he is working on a project in
Merida, Yucatan, building a Power Plant. He is a loyal FreeBSD user and
admin since 1993 at ITESO University (Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico). He
can be reached at [email protected] or
[email protected]. |
