ytalk For Linux

YTalk is a compatible replacement for the Unix talk(1) program, which adds a number of features. Mainly, it can talk to more than one person at a time, and it can the two different types of talk daemons out there.

To install this commands are usefull:

./configure make make install

YTalk was written and maintained by Britt Yenne up to verison 3.0pl2. That version was released years ago, and there have been no new releases since then, so I (Roger Espel Llima, ) have taken up maintenance, updating the code to work with newer Unixes, fixing bugs and adding new features.

YTalk is free software, which can be freely redistributed, used and modified as long as the copyright notices are kept in the source and header files.

Here are some key features of "ytalk":

� multiple simultaneous connections, compatible with Unix Talk as well as previous versions of YTalk. � text-based or X11 interface, at your choice � YTalk windows scroll, instead of wrapping around � start shells inside YTalk, type commands and let your partners see them � Ytalk is 8-bit clean, so you can type all those cool accented characters � you can save any side of the current conversation, including yours � you can define aliases for addresses of people to ring or for hostnames to ring them on. � support for virtual hosts and multi-homed machines � YTalk is very configurable � lots of bugfixes, especially on Linux and Solaris � even more bugfixes now � Ytalk is Y2K clean; as far as I know it has always been, since all the date-processing it does is comparing Unix timestamps in seconds since 1 Jan 1970. This is silly, but I've been asked a couple times already about Ytalk's Y2K status...

What's New in This Release:

� try to look for the current machine's fqdn if hostname() doens't � include a '.' � fixed the shell under Solaris (oops, broke it in 3.1!) � misc autoconf fixes � resizing didn't work with Linux and ncurses, fixed it � YTalk now checks that connections are answered form the expected host; � if they aren't, it complains and shows the new hostname � n-way talk sessions should now be free of duplicated users � fixed the "readdress" option somewhat � portability fixes for 64-bit machines (size_t instead of int)