MACALLSTR@vax1.physics.oxford.ac.UK (01/15/88)
I'd strongly recommend that people DO NOT USE PHONE. It interrupts work, doesn't work satisfactorily on non-DEC terminals and, worst of all, wastes time. I use a very simple utility ( based on BRKTHRU/BRDCST system service ) which lets you send one-line messages from ANY terminal to ANY OTHER terminal. If you don't already have such a such I can mail it to you. ( It's a small FORTRAN program . ) There are similar things on DECUS tapes. The TO command allows you to send and the receiver to read a message without interrupting his/her current activity. TO is useful for short messages ( There's also a conversational mode which doesn't let you see all the typing mistakes at the other end ! ) and MAIL is best for long messages. Repeatedly receiving messages 'xxxx is phoning you' when you're in the middle of something is really annoying! Although I don't see PHONE as a useful facility, I don't disable it. It is available for those who like it. John
ca053@unocss.UUCP (Tim Russell) (01/26/88)
Here at the University of Nebraska, we recently installed SEND, as part of
the Bitnet package, and it's very handy. It allows any user to send a one-line
message to another user, or multiple lines at once, much like Unix's write
command when both use it. The thing I like about it is that if a user doesn't
want messages, as I don't when editing at 1200 baud from home, they can just
SET BROADCAST=NOUSER1, and send will tell everyone that the given person isn't
receiving messages.
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"My kingdom for a real username!" Tim Russell
ihnp4!unocss!ca053
==============================================================================tjfs@otter.hple.hp.com (Tim Steele) (02/08/88)
There's a similar one in the DECUS library that I wrote some time ago, called NOTIFY. It has the advantage (if you're a paranoid system manager like me) that messages from ordinary users are checked to make sure they're not too long and get prefixed with a banner, like: ***From T_STEELE: Why do we all try and write the same tool? System administrators, however, get the use of extra flags like: o Can turn off the ***From USERNAME: tag o Can send long messages o Can send messages from a file o Can send to a terminal (if the user's logged out) or to a username o Can send to multiple recipients or system-wide . . . It's called NOTIFY, and is available from DECUS on a 600' tape in VMSINSTAL format for easy (actually, trivial) installation. Tim
sqkeith@csvax.liv.ac.uk (02/17/88)
In article <860001@otter.hple.hp.com>, tjfs@otter.hple.hp.com (Tim Steele) writes: > There's a similar one in the DECUS library that I wrote some time ago, called > NOTIFY. It has the advantage (if you're a paranoid system manager like me) > that messages from ordinary users are checked to make sure they're not too > long and get prefixed with a banner, like: > > ***From T_STEELE: Why do we all try and write the same tool? > I have also written one called TELL which works via a detached process which processes TELL 'packets' sent to a mailbox from ordinary users - sort of mimics OPCOM. The advantage of using such a process is that the interactive user doesn't have to hang around waiting for his/her TELL command to complete when the message is to be sent to a remote DECnet site. In addition, $BRKTHRU can be used with longish timeout values.. Status messages/errors are transmitted back to the sender via a broadcast. TELL also provides: * a tele-conferencing system - every user shares the same channel with the tell-server performing the necessary message duplication and distribution on the local node and all participating remote nodes. * a rejection facility - users may prevent others from sending messages to them and may leave a message in the tell-server to be automatically transmitted on receipt of 'trapped' users' messages. * Aliasing is, of course, provided for fun-loving systems managers eager to have users ripping each others throats out. * Alarm clock messages may be queued. There are extra functions concerned with eavesdropping and command activity monitoring on a per user basis; these are essentially ad-hoc. As soon as the tell-server has been modified so that it declares itself as a decnet task and I've tidied some other parts of the code, I'll make it available to interested sites. Keith Halewood "How is it possible to remember that which did not take place? - Eunuchs (Un*x) accounting strikes again"