Ubuntu Manpage: ytalk - A multi-user chat program.

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runtime options
ytalk startup file
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NAME

       ytalk - A multi-user chat program.

SYNOPSIS

       ytalk [-s] [-Y] [-E] [-i] [-q] [-v] [-h hostname_or_ip] username...

DESCRIPTION

YTalk 3.3.0

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.

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"
aliasname - an alias defined in your .ytalkrc

You can specify multiple user names on the command line, ie:

ytalk george fred@hissun.edu marc@grumpy.cc

The -s option starts your YTalk window in a shell.

The -Y option requires a capital Y or N as an answer to any yes/no question.

The -E option requires you to press escape once before answering a yes/no question (for people who type
looking at the keyboard).

The -i option disables the auto-invite port (meaning you won't see "talk to blah@blah.com", but your talk
daemon will beep you instead).

The -q option causes YTalk to prompt you before quitting.

The -v option prints the program version and exits.

The -h option specifies the name or address of the local machine; this is useful on multi-homed machines,
or virtual hosts, to specify which network interface to use for communication.

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 no
dedicated YTalk daemon. 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 connected 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 subdivided into smaller and smaller windows, one for each connected 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.

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 connections. 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 connections, 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.

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
k: kill all unconnected
o: options
r: rering all
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 invitation and ring the given user.

By choosing option "d", you can select the name of a connection to terminate.

By choosing option "k", you can make YTalk forget all pending (waiting) connections.

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 "r", all users that have not yet responded to your talk invitation will be re-rung.

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 terminated.

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. The command-line option "-i" turns this off.

RUNTIME OPTIONS

       When  you  select  Options off of the main menu, you are given the opportunity to edit the YTalk options.
       The current options are:

            s: turn scrolling [off/on]
            w: turn word-wrap [off/on]
            i: turn auto-import [off/on]
            v: turn auto-invite [off/on]
            r: turn reringing [off/on]
            p: [don't] prompt before rerings
            q: [don't] prompt before quitting

       If scrolling is turned on, then a user's window will scroll  when  he  reaches  the  bottom,  instead  of
       wrapping back around to the top.

       If  word-wrap  is  turned on, then any word which would overextend the right margin will be automatically
       moved to the next line on your screen.

       If auto-import is turned on, then YTalk will assume that you wish to talk to any users which  connect  to
       other YTalk users which are connected to you.  That last sentence does make sense; try again.  YTalk will
       add these users to your session automatically, without asking you for verification.

       If auto-invite is turned on, then YTalk will automatically accept any  connection  requested  by  another
       user and add them to your session.  You will not be asked for verification.

       If  rering  is turned on, then YTalk will re-ring any user who does not respond to your invitation within
       30 seconds.

       If prompt-rering is turned on, then YTalk will ask you before re-ringing a user.

       If prompt-quit is turned on, then YTalk will wait for keyboard input before quitting.

       Any of these options can be set to your preference in your .ytalkrc file, as described below.

YTALK STARTUP FILE

       If your home directory contains a file named ".ytalkrc" then YTalk will read this file while starting up.
       All YTalk runtime options, as well as some startup options, can be set in this file.

       SETTING BOOLEAN OPTIONS

       Boolean options can be pre-set with the following syntax:

            turn option [off | on]

       where  option  is  one  of  scrolling  , word-wrap , auto-import , auto-invite , rering , prompt-rering ,
       prompt-quit , caps , escape-yesno , noinvite , ignorebreak , or beeps .  Setting these options works just
       like described above.  For example, one could enable word-wrap with the line:

            turn word-wrap on

       ALIASES

       You can setup aliases so you don't have to type the full address of the user you want to ring.  There are
       three types of aliases:

       alias aliasname@ username@
                   Replaces aliasname@host with username@host for every host. The '@' at the end of username@ is
                   not required.

       alias @aliashost @realhost
                   Replaces  user@aliashost  with  user@realhost  for  every  user.  The '@' at the beginning of
                   @realhost is not required.

       alias aliasname user@host
                   Replaces aliasname with user@host.

       SELECTING INTERFACES AND VIRTUAL HOSTS

       On machines with multiple IP addresses (multiple interfaces,  or  virtual  hosts),  you  can  choose  the
       default  address  to use for communication with YTalk, using the localhost command in your .ytalkrc file.
       The syntax is:

       localhost hostname-or-IP-address

       SETTING RE-ADDRESS MODES

       The purpose of readdressing is to allow YTalk connections across point-to-point  network  gateways  where
       the  local  machines  know  themselves  by  a  different address (and typically hostname) than the remote
       machines.  The basic syntax of a readdress command is this:

            readdress from-address to-address domain

       The readdress statement simply makes  a  claim  that  the  machine(s)  in  domain  communicate  with  the
       machine(s)  at  from-address  by  sending a packet to to-address .  Since most users have no use for this
       whatsoever, I'll describe it only briefly.

       THIS IS NOT ROUTING.  For example, my machine at home is connected via PPP to the network at  my  office.
       My  machine at home thinks its ethernet address is 192.188.253.1 and its hostname is "talisman.com".  The
       network at my office has the address 192.67.141.0.  When I'm connected via PPP, my home machine is placed
       into the office network as address 192.67.141.9 with hostname "talisman.austin.eds.com".

       YTalk  needs to know that if it is running on domain 192.67.141.0 and receives packets from 192.188.253.1
       that it should respond to 192.67.141.9, not 192.188.253.1.  right?  right.  okay, okay, okay.  I put this
       line into my .ytalkrc on both ends:

            readdress talisman talisman.austin.eds.com 192.67.141.0

       On my home end, this translates to:

            readdress 192.188.253.1 192.67.141.9 192.67.141.0

       which  tells my home machine to advertise itself as "192.67.141.9" instead of "192.188.253.1" when YTalk-
       ing to machines on the network "192.67.141.0".  On the office end, the readdress command translates to:

            readdress 192.67.141.9 192.67.141.9 192.67.141.0

       which the office machines basically ignore.

       Note that, in this case, the problem could also have been solved by telling the home  YTalk  to  use  the
       192.67.141.0 interface, when doing YTalk requests across the PPP link.

FILES

       /usr/local/etc/ytalkrc
           System-wide defaults file.

       ~/.ytalkrc
           User's local configuration file.  This file overrides
           options set in the system ytalkrc file.

CURRENT MAINTAINER

       Andreas Kling
       <keso@impul.se>

ORIGINAL AUTHOR

       Britt Yenne

PAST MAINTAINERS

       Roger Espel Llima
       Jessica Peterson

CONTRIBUTORS

       Special  thanks  to  Carl  Edman for numerous code patches, beta testing, and comments.  I think this guy
       spends as much time on ytalk as I do.

       Special thanks to Tobias Hahn and Geoff W. for beta testing and suggestions.

       Thanks to Sitaram Ramaswamy for the original YTalk manpage.

       Thanks to Magnus Hammerin for Solaris 2.* support.

       Thanks to Thilo Wunderlich for Linux support.

       Thanks to Jonas Yngvesson for aside messages in X.

       Thanks to Andreas Stolcke for fixing the X resource database calls.

       Thanks to Pete Wenzel for fixing the #elif directive.

       Thanks to John Vanderpool, Shih-Chen Huang, Andrew Myers, Duncan Sinclair, Evan McLean, Larry  Schwimmer,
       J. Adam Hawkes, and Mark Musone for comments and ideas.

       Thanks to Steve McIntyre for patches and ideas.

       Thanks to Katarina Erkkonen for CVS hosting.

       Thanks to Alexander Rigbo for patches, testing and many good ideas.

BUGS

       Please mail any bugs to the maintainer of this version, at <keso@impul.se>

LICENSE

       This  program  is  free  software;  you  can  redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU
       General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License,  or
       (at your option) any later version.

       This  program  is  distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even
       the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General  Public
       License for more details.