[TriLUG] question about ytalk

[Jym Williams Zavada]

On Thu, 19 Aug 2010, Joel James Adamson wrote:

>Warren Myers <volcimaster at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I like using ytalk (http://www.iagora.com/~espel/ytalk/ytalk.html) on an 
>>ssh tunnel for secure chatting between two parties.
>
>Who do you find to ytalk with?  Since getting shell access at UNC and
>Freeshell, I have not found anyone who's actually online or knows what
>ytalk is!  It used to be all I did on the internet ;)

Ahhhh, talk/ytalk.  The original Internet IM service!  Back when my brother 
and I were attending colleges some four states apart, it was how we kept in 
touch without incurring large long-distance phone bills.  This was back 
before the eternal September of the Internet, when SPAM was yet unheard of 
outside of Usenet.  Those were the days!

Anyway, Warren, I don't know that there's a way to do what you want with 
ytalk other than by editing the source and doing a re-compile.  I think 
you'd have a quicker time of it combining 'write' with 'screen', to be 
honest.  However, when I need a quick-n-dirty way to talk to somebody like 
that, I just open up another ssh session and fire up the write command (then 
iform the other party to do the same :).  Although it's not anywhere near as 
tidy screenwise as talk/ytalk, it's is pretty much ubiquitous to *nix (I've 
not enough experience on HPUX and AIX to say for sure that it *is* there, 
but I recall using it on both AT&T and BSD systems back in the day, so I 
can't imagine why either of the two would *not* have it implemented), so 
unless you're dealing with customised, very minimalist systems it should be 
a part of the kit.

-Jym Williams Zavada