[comp.unix] multi-user TALK on BITnet machines ?

werner@rascal.ics.utexas.edu (Werner Uhrig) (10/30/90)

	I'm interested in finding ways to have a multi-user net-wide
	discussion forum occassionally and wonder what software is out
	there to support that and with what kind of limitations.

	In particular, I heard about "conferences" on BITnet, but can't
	find anything in my (convoluted) archive-files on that ...

	I'd suspect that such *REAL-TIME* conference-software does not
	cope well across network-types, but it might be possible to get
	the respective parties all on machines on the same network, be that
	BITnet-hosts or other.

					thanks,		---Werner

ps: multi-user TALK could even be useful if restricted to only one host
	as participants might be able to login remotely ...


-------
werner@cs.utexas.edu / werner@astro.as.utexas.edu / werner@UTA3081.bitnet
UUCP:     uunet!cs.utexas.edu!werner   OR  ...!utastro!werner
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darcy@druid.UUCP (D'Arcy J.M. Cain) (11/03/90)

In article <2243@megadon.UUCP> Werner Uhrig writes:
> [about looking for a multi-user conference program]
>
>ps: multi-user TALK could even be useful if restricted to only one host
>	as participants might be able to login remotely ...
>
If you have an ANSI compiler check out my Chat program recently posted
to alt.sources.  It is based on IPC message passing in SVR3 but can be
adapted to other schemes.  The actual message passing is broken out in
order to make it easy to use other schemes.  I plan to implement a TLI
version and a user has told me that they are planning on writing a pipe
version.  I am sure a socket version would be simple as well.  The user
interface is a curses based multi part screen.  There is a one line box
at the bottom of the screen where you enter commands and text.  There
is automatic word wrap on text entry.  As text is entered it scrolls
up onto the larger portion of the screen labelled with your name along
with the text from other users.  There are channels so that more than
one conference can be ongoing at any one time.  You can optionally
save the session to disk and a few scripts are included to start up
based on your preferences.  The current version is 1.2.  There are
fixes and enhancements to come but I think you will find the current
package useful.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain (darcy@druid)     |
D'Arcy Cain Consulting             |   I support gun control.
West Hill, Ontario, Canada         |   Let's start with the government!
+ 416 281 6094                     |