UNIX Talk

The Talk application was originally developed on UNIX machines to allow people at different terminals, and even different machines connected to a network to communicate synchronusly (in real time) with each other. It is the progenitor of many of the collaborative or real-time text-based communication software such as IRC.

talk UNIX man page info

   Syntax
     talk person [ttyname]

   Description
     The talk command is a visual communication program which copies lines
     from your terminal to that of another user.

     If you wish to talk to someone on your own machine, then "person" is just
     the person's login name. If you wish to talk to a user on another host,
     then person is of the form :

host!user
        or
     host.user
        or
     host:user
        or the preferred
     user@host

If you want to talk to a user who is logged in more than once, the
     ttyname argument may be used to indicate the appropriate terminal name.

     When first called, it sends the message

Message from TalkDaemon@his_machine...
     talk: connection requested by your_name@your_machine.
     talk: respond with: talk your_name@your_machine

to the user you wish to talk to. At this point, the recipient of the
     message should reply by typing

talk  your_name@your_machine

It does not matter from which machine the recipient replies, as long as
     his login-name is the same.  Once communication is established, the two
     parties may type simultaneously, with their output appearing in separate
     windows. Typing Ctrl-L will cause the screen to be reprinted, while your
     erase, kill, and word kill characters will work in talk as normal.  To
     the bottom of the screen and restores the terminal.

     Permission to talk may be denied or granted by use of the mesg command.
     At the outset talking is allowed.  Certain commands, in particular nroff
     and pr(1) disallow messages in order to prevent messy output.

   Examples
     The following example demonstrates how to use the otalk command.  In
     this case, user1, whose system (system1) is running ULTRIX V2.2 ini-
     tiates a session with user2, whose system (system2) is running ULTRIX
     V3.0.  User1 types the following:

     

system1> talk user2@system2

The following message appears on the screen of user2:

Message from Talk_Daemon@system2 at 12:37 ...
     talk: connection requested by user1@system1.
     talk: respond with:  otalk user1@system1

To establish the connection user2 follows the instructions from the
     Talk_Daemon and types the following at the system prompt:

system2> talk user1@system1

Author: N. Dwight Barnette
Curator: Computer Science Dept : VA TECH. (c) Copyright 1994-2000.
Last Updated: 11/6/98