Problems with "talk"

Nov 15 18:44 UTC 1992

        I regularly get talk requests when I log in to Grex, however, I've
never once been able to answer them.
        When I get a "talk" request, I keep getting interrupted with 2 line
messages explaining how to answer.  I've tried "!talk user" and "!talk
user@grex" but I always get [Your party is refusing messages].

response 2 of 89:

Nov 15 22:07 UTC 1992

Hmm...  I've used talk successfully here.  "!talk user" is the proper
way to respond.  Maybe it's the case that if someone has their write-
perms turned off but you have yours on, they can send a request but
you can't respond -- same way it is with the vanilla "write" program.

response 4 of 89:

Nov 15 22:56 UTC 1992

Yeah, if they have their perms set to OFF, then you'll get that
error message.  Confused me the first time I saw it.

response 6 of 89:

Nov 15 23:02 UTC 1992

Then the question is why they're trying to talk to *him* with their
permissions off.

response 8 of 89:

Nov 16 00:58 UTC 1992

Also, doesn't talk only work with smart terminals?  I've had to
switch to "chat" when someone without a smart terminal requested
a talk.  Is there some way the programs could be smarter?  For
example, if someone tried to "talk" to someone with a dumb termcap, he
or she would be give a message, "Oops. Can't 'talk' try 'chat'"

response 10 of 89:

Nov 16 03:32 UTC 1992

Yep, that looks to be the problem.  If you want things to work
properly on Grex, make sure /usr/local/bin is *before* any of the
system directories, sush as /bin, /usr/bin, and /usr/ucb.  You
also don't need /usr/umb in there; that's an M-Netism.  And
having "." first in your path is an invitation to disaster.

response 12 of 89:

Nov 16 14:40 UTC 1992

Your communications software must be emulating a vt100 terminal or
something similar.  Looks like he changed your .profile to tell Unix
that you're a vt100.  (Look at the line that begins with 'tset'.)

Basically, 'talk' is a split-screen program that puts your typing
in one half of the screen, the other person's in the others, and
allows both people to type at the same time.  To function successfully,
it has to know how to clear the screen and position the cursor on
your terminal, hence Unix has to know what kind of terminal you are,
as the commands to do this differ from one terminal to another.
Wouldn't really call it "fancy" -- it'll work with any comm.
program that can emulate a vt100, ansi, or other "smart" terminal,
and that includes just about all of them these days.

For a system connected to the internet, 'talk' also lets you talk
to people on other systems.

response 14 of 89:

Nov 16 22:44 UTC 1992

This might be simply a brute force kludge, ... but ... write loginid -c
has never failed me here or anywhere else. 
  
All the fancy stuff is neat-o, however the kiss theory also
applies.     I also *much* prefer to see the contact coming in
at a character-by-character rate instead of line-by-line.

response 16 of 89:

Nov 17 01:50 UTC 1992

Same way it works here - only you use the full address.  Of course, that
won't work on Grex, because we aren't on the internet, so we don't 
communicate directly with other systems.  

I have never much liked !talk.  All that cursor jumping makes me seasick,
and I've never seen the advantage of being able to start typing while the
other person is still typing.  You don't start talking while the other
person is talking, and besides, I'm usually too busy trying to catch what
the other person is saying to write coherently at the same time.

response 18 of 89:

Nov 17 05:42 UTC 1992

re #16:  Suit yourself..  I love talk and find it worlds better than write..

response 20 of 89:

Nov 18 04:00 UTC 1992

Not for free.

response 22 of 89:

Dec 3 01:48 UTC 1992

 ... first finding the sources, knowing about makefiles, determining the
necessary options for that system, and editing the sources to fix anything
that's left over after all that.  Thanks a heap, Russ; I think you'd want
to make sure talk is already there if you need to ask this question.

Obviously, you can only talk to someone who's logged in somewhere at the
time, BTW

response 24 of 89:

Dec 6 19:44 UTC 1992

I read all of the above again, and "came out by the same door wherein I
went" - i.e., it didn't learn anything useful. I was just editing a
response, and was interrupted by a two line messge, that ended with
"respond talk <user>". I didn't know *precisely* what to do. It was still
at an edit prompt, but I tried with "talk <user>", with no effect. I tried
just a "return", with no effect. So I tried to list what I was working on,
and it did, so I erased the garbage, and finished the editing. WHAT
SHOULD I have done (and what would have been the result)?