write replacements

[John M. Sellens]

In article <1991May5.130228.6320 at santra.uucp> jkp at cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala) writes:
|In article <kre.673344580 at mundamutti.cs.mu.OZ.AU>, kre at cs (Robert Elz) writes:
|[ describes a zephyr-like / write-like system on which you can control
|  the appearance of the arriving message ]
|
|I did something like that when getting familiar with SunRPC.  It's a
|bit buggy, but the idea is basically the one you're after, I think.
|Also, it appears that SunRPC is not very good for this so the program
|should be rewritten to work on top of a tcp protocol (funny, when it
|was just an exercise in SunRPC to start with ;-).
|
|Here's the README file; the package is in nic.funet.fi,
|pub/unix/tcpip/rmsg.tar.Z.  If anyone is willing to adopt it and make
|it better, feel free.


At Waterloo, we have a command called (predictably) "msg", which seems
very similar to Jyrki's "rmsg", except that it uses ordinary TCP/IP,
rather than RPC.  Runs on Sun Sequent MIPS DEC etc.  We like it much
better than write and talk, and have been using it for years, all over
campus.

Available via anonymous ftp from watmath.waterloo.edu in ~/pub/msg.shar
and here's a copy of the man page for thoe of you who mght be
interested.

John




MSG(1)                     User Commands                    MSG(1)

NAME
     msg - write a short message to other users

SYNOPSIS
     msg [ -l ] [ -m message ] [ -p ] [ -r ] user ...

DESCRIPTION
     Msg writes a one-line message to a given set of users.  If a
     user is logged in more than once, each instance of that user
     will receive the message.

     Previous versions of msg allowed the last argument to be the
     message.  This confusing behaviour is no longer available.

     The message is preceded by a beep, the login name of the
     sender, and the name of the sender's machine.  If the sender
     is set-userid to someone other than the super-user, then the
     real (set-userid) name is printed in parentheses.  Replies
     should use the login name, not the parenthesized (set-
     userid) name, since the login name is the way msg finds peo-
     ple.

     Msg works across machines, as long as the remote machine is
     running the msgd(8) message daemon.  To do this, user should
     be of the form person at machine (or the old-style
     machine!person ).

     It is very annoying to receive a message just before your
     screen clears, making it impossible to read the message.  To
     help alleviate this problem, msg will save a copy of the
     message and you can use the -l option to repeat the last
     message you received.

OPTIONS
     -r     If the -r, option is given, msg will look in the file
            /usr/tmp/msg.userid file to find out the last person
            who sent you a message, and assume you want to reply
            to them.  (Additional recipients can still be speci-
            fied, so the same rules apply about which arguments
            are messages and which are users.  The easiest thing
            to use is msg -r with no other arguments; type the
            reply on the next line.)

     -l     List the last message received.  This simply shows
            the file /usr/tmp/msg.userid so that you don't have
            to remember the name.  msg -lr is a handy way to show
            the last message and prompt for a reply.

     -p     Use the text of the previous message you sent (saved
            in the file /usr/tmp/pmsg.userid) as the text of this
            message.  This is handy if you mistyped someone's
            userid, and typed a long message only to have it

Formatted 91/03/08    University of Waterloo                    1


MSG(1)                     User Commands                    MSG(1)

            fail.

     Msg obeys the restrictions of mesg(1).

SEE ALSO
     write(1), mail(1), talk(1), msgd(8)

EXAMPLES
     % msg -m 'This is the message in quotes.' user1 user2
            Quoting a string makes it one argument as far as Unix
            is concerned.

     % msg user1 user2
            <type the message here, on the next line>

     % msg -r
            <Type a reply here to the last person who sent you a
            msg.>

     % msg -r -m 'Or you can put the reply here.'

FILES
     /usr/tmp/msg.userid
          Contains the last message received.

     /usr/tmp/pmsg.userid
          Contains the text of the previous message sent or
          attempted.

     /usr/tmp/mesg.userid
          Answerback message - set by mesg(1).

AUTHOR
     The staff of the Math Faculty Computing Facility at the
     University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario Canada.  Bug
     reports can be sent to either or both of John Sellens
     (jmsellens at watmath.waterloo.edu) or
     uw.mfcf.bugs at watmath.waterloo.edu.

COPYRIGHT
     Copyright 1988, 1989, 1990 University of Waterloo
     Redistribution is permitted.

Formatted 91/03/08    University of Waterloo                    2