Your Internet Consultant - The FAQs of Life Online
Note: Because there are so many kinds of computers on
the Internet, not all of them support talk. Even worse, the ones that do
don't necessarily have talk programs that can talk to each other. A variety of
alternate talk programs are available, like ytalk and ntalk.
Check with your system administrator to see which one will work for
you.
To make a talk request, simply type
talk user@domain.comIf the person you wish to communicate with is online and willing to receive messages, he will see an invitation to talk.
Message from Talk_Daemon@jive at 23:29 ... talk: connection requested by waffle@bolero.rahul.net. talk: respond with: talk waffle@bolero.rahul.netIf he isn't available, you'll see a message like this. Pretty simple.
[Your party is not logged on.]
Note: Most talk programs will send a zillion or so talk requests at regular intervals until they are answered. Each request dumps a few lines of text to the recipient's screen, which will annoy the heck out of someone who is, say, in the middle of composing an e-mail message or trying to use a database. When making a talk request, let it "ring through" once and then type control-c to stop the annoying messages. Wait to see whether the recipient "returns your call."
Here's a sample talk session:
[Ringing your party] [Ringing your party again] [Connected] hey, how's it going? Yum. Dill pickles? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi. fine. I'm hungry and could really go for a nice pickle pizza right about now.