Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!gatech!bloom-beacon!apple!bionet!ig!agate!saturn!ucschu.ucsc.edu!humtech
From: humtech@ucschu.UCSC.EDU (Mark Frost)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: How about a "Talk" for the Mac?
Keywords: talk broadcast
Message-ID: <4593@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Date: 23 Aug 88 19:10:23 GMT
Sender: usenet@saturn.ucsc.edu
Reply-To: humtech@ucschu.ucsc.edu (Mark Frost)
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz; Humanities Division
Lines: 24


First, I'd like to thank all those who replied to my original request for
an ftp implementation on the mac. For those who are wondering the overwhelming
response was in favor of Mac/IP from stanford (available I believe on 
sumex).
Now for my next question... On our Apple/LocalTalk system we have given 
individual users the "Broadcast" icon. This allows a user to send a message
(NOT mail) to any other user(s) who also have the Broadcast software on the
net. The message is seen by other users as an "alert" box immediately (well,
pretty soon) after the original user send the message. True conversing is
very difficult as you must say, get a reply, go to Chooser and select
Broadcast, set who you want to send it to, type in the message and send it.
The other user gets the message and has to do the same procedure to reply
and so on.
UNIX has a nice program called "talk" that allows a real interactive
conversation between two users. Is there something like this available for
the Mac on an AppleTalk network? There are times I'd like to really converse
with someone on the net, but Broadcast is a real pain to do this with.
(Another problem with Broadcast is that the alert box seen by the other
user has the cherry bomb in it - leading some user to think they have got
a system error!).
Thanx for your help

Mark Frost (humtech@ucschu.ucsc.edu)