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AmTALK
******
Welcome to
AmTALK
, the AmigaOS Talk client.
Version 1.3 (14.02.97)
Copyright
*********
AmTALK has been designed, developed and written by
Oliver Wagner
Landsberge 5
D-45549 Sprockhövel
Germany
E-Mail: (owagner@vapor.com)
All Rights Reserved.
This document compiled by Adam Hough <adamh@spots.ab.ca>
© 1996-97 Oliver Wagner
All Rights Reserved
Installer Script
© 1996-97 Robert Reiswig
All Rights Reserved
Brought together in a heavy overnight operation
License
=======
AmTALK Registered Software License Agreement
-------------------------------------------
AmTALK is Copyright © 1996-97 by Oliver Wagner, All Rights Reserved.
The producer of this software will grant the Licensee a limited,
non-exclusive right to use the program AmTALK and it's associated files
on a single machine. The producer will hand out a special
identification file called the key file to the Licensee. This key file
will enable the Licensee to fully use the AmTALK package according to
the terms of this license. The key file is stricly for personal use by
the Licensee only. Any disclosure of they key file will invalidate the
license and the key file itself. The Licensee will be held liable of any
damage arising out of the disclosure of the key file.
No warranty expressed or implied. You use this software at your own
risk and discretion. Any damage to you, your machine, house, universe
or reality is completely your own problem. Vaporware and its related
authors are not responsible for anything whatsoever that happens to
you, even if the software destroys everything you hold dear. Using this
software is considered to be acceptance of these terms. Ignorance is no
excuse.
The product is provided as is without warranty of any kind, either
express or implied, statutory or otherwise, including without
limitation any implied warranties of non-infringement, merchantability
and fitness for a particular purpose. The entire risk as to use,
results and performance of the product is assumed by you and should the
product prove to be defective, you assume the entire cost of all
necessary servicing, repair or other remediation. In no event shall
the producer of this product or its resellers be liable for any
property damage, personal injury, loss of use or other indirect,
incidental or consequential damages, including without limitation, any
damages for lost profits, business interruption or data which may be
lost or rendered inaccurate, even if we have been advised of the
possibility of such damages. This agreement shall exclusively be
governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Support
=======
There is a support mailing list to discuss AmTALK related issues; write
to <AmTALK-request@vapor.com> and put "ADD" in the mail body. Please
join the list if you want to report bugs or have suggestions.
About Author
============
Olli Wagner is a sausage munching German who writes really good Amiga
software like amIRC and Voyager (along with several others.) This is
shareware so if you like it, send Olli a large slice of bratwurst to
the address in the registration info in the about window. Also send him
email asking what happened to Knabber and if VNG will ever ship.
Description
***********
AmTALK is an enhanced version of the UNIX talk program. This program
was the precursor of IRC in that it permitted remote users to chat with
one another in real time. While IRC extends the basic functionality
such that many people can talk to each other simultaneously, the basic
need for a direct one on one method of communication is still there.
However, using talk is rather like using the phone in that people
aren't always available so wouldn't it be nice to have an answering
machine.
Vaporware introduces... AmTALK.
AmTALK has the following features:
* fully multithreaded for several talk sessions at once.
* Auto answer facility to accept talk requests and store incoming
messages. Can be triggered manually or by a user-definable
timeout. Optional auto answer information icon on workbench
displaying number of new and unread messages.
* "Locate" function to locate a user on a dynamic IP address even if
you don't know which IP he is using right now.
* History of last used talk addresses for easy access.
* user configurable sounds for notifying of incoming talk requests
and successfully established talk links.
* Userlist to store frequently used talk partners, with aliasing for
easy talk start and specificable access privilleges (override auto
answer, refuse/ignore always, locate always etc.)
* Can be started from inetd, or reside resident in the background,
activated by hotkey.
* Supports clipboard Cut & Paste from talk windows.
* Keeps a full log of incoming talk requests.
* nice and friendly GUI to start talks, control operation and
configuration.
* handles incoming talk requests with "wrong" usernames gracefully.
* works with Miami, AmiTCP and as225r2-derived TCP/IP stacks.
Installation
************
The easiest way of installation is of course using the provided
Installer script. Note that the provided Installer script doesn't work
with the old OS 1.3 1.24/1.25 versions of Installer. Please get
Installer-43_3.lha from AmiNet (/util/misc) or from ftp.vapor.com,
/pub/misc/Installer-43_3.lha.
You may also want to add this to your startnet or startup.miami script:
IF SHOW('P','AmTALK') THEN DO /* Already there */
DELAY(5)
END
ELSE DO
ADDRESS COMMAND 'run >nil: AmTALK '
END
This means that the program will be run automatically when you start up
your TCP/IP stack so the ability to handle incoming chat requests will
be there automatically.
AmTALK can also be started from inetd "on demand". Add the following
line to your
inetd.conf
file:
ntalk dgram udp wait root <path>AmTALK
<path>AmTALK identd=1
Note that you have to specify the full path to the AmTALK executable,
and it's right that you have to specify it
twice
.
Your identd will then start AmTALK when a talk requests comes in.
Running the program
*******************
In order to talk with someone, you can either use the provided
talk
rexx starter program. Simply type
talk user@host
from a shell window.
Also, when started manually, you will be presented with the Talk
window, which is thoroughly explained in the next section. When AmTALK
is lurking in the background, you can open it everytime with the
specified hotkey. This defaults to
ramiga t
.
The GUI
*******
The default window opened up gives you access to the address of the user
you'd like to speak to, a drop down window (an arrow pointing to a line)
which is a history of people you've talked to in the past so you don't
have to type their addresses in again.
Underneath that are three buttons.
Talk
This opens up a direct chat to the person specified in the
address field above.
Locate and Talk
This allows you to 'find' a person on a dynamic
link such as those provided by most ISPs. It also needs a full address
but will search through all the addresses in that level of addressing
until it finds the person you'd like to talk to. It can take a little
bit more time though.
Userlist
This brings up another menu that allows you to enter
aliases for addresses - similar in style to the way Mail programs do
it. This means that you can type in "Olli" rather than
"olli@hurz.wupper.de" at the address line.
Once you've chosen to talk another window comes up which is the chat
window itself. This is dominated by two sections - the top one which
contains what your chatee has to say to you and the lower one which is
what you're saying to them. Scroll bars on both allow you to look at
what's moved off the top of the screen. In the dragbar at the top is
the address of the person you're talking to.
The Talk Received Window:
=========================
This pops up when someone else tries to start a Talk session with you.
Ignore
Press this if you don't want to talk to the person. He
will get a message stating that you're not available.
Ignore Always
Press this if you never want to talk to the person
ever again. He will get a message stating that you're never available.
Refuse
Press this if you don't want to talk to the person. He will
get a message stating you're ignoring incoming requests.
Refuse Always
Press this if you never want to talk to the person
ever again. He will get a message stating you're ignoring incoming
requests.
Answering Machine
Route the call to the answering machine.
AA Always
Always route this person's calls to the answering
machine.
Accept
Start the talk session.
The Menu Bar
============
Start Talk
This brings up the window mentioned earlier on and
allows you to have multiple talk sessions going on with other people at
the same time.
Review AA Messages
This is a list of all messages that have been
sent to you while you've been away from your computer. It tells you the
address of the talkee, when the chat attempt happened, how long the
message was and whether you've read it or not. The window to the bottom
contains the text of the message. The three buttons at the bottom allow
you to start a talk session with the person who left the message. If
you double click on the name that two will start a chat session with
the person who left the message.
Review Log
This is a list of all the chat sessions that have been
started recently and list the time, date, addressee and what happened
to the session. The three buttons at the bottom allow you to delete the
list that's stored, or talk to the originator again.
Copy to Clipboard
Copy selected contents of the current window to
the clipboard.
Paste From Clipboard
Copy the contents of the clipboard to the
talk session. The contents must be ascii format.
[1] xxxxxx
This is a list of all the current talk sessions in
progress. To just to the appropriate one, just choose the option.
Configuration
=============
Hotkey
Set the keyboard option that you want to call up AmTALK. This
defaults to
ramiga t
Colors
here you can set the colour of your text and background. Click on
the line to bring up the options for changing them.
Sounds
AmTALK can play samples for when a connection is attempted and for
when it succeeds. Type the location of the sound files or use the
document button to bring up a file requester. The number refers to
the replay speed and typically changes to an appropriate value
automatically. Test allows you to try out the sample.
AutoAnswer
In the text window to the top, you can type in the message that
people will get when they try to reach you if you're not paying
attention, don't want to talk to them and so on. The two sliders
set how long their message can be and how long it'll take the
answering machine to kick in.
UserList:
See the section about this earlier on.
MUI:
Set your preferences for all MUI related gagetry in this program.
Read the MUIPrefs documentation for further details.
Show AA Infowindow:
This is a tiny little window that displays messages left for you
to read in the format "read messages/unread messages" - double
clicking on it brings up the AutoAnswer message window documented
earlier.
Snapshow AutoAnswer Window:
This ensures the program remembers where you left the window.
Auto Answer All:
This means that the Answering Machine handles all incoming calls
rather than bringing up the Talk requester so you aren't bothered
by them. The default is off so you get the option of answering
people's chat requests.
AREXX
*****
In addition to the standard MUI Arexx commands, AmTALK provides the
following two commands:
talk
Template:
RemoteUser/A,RemoteHost/A,RemoteTTY,Locate/S
findalias
Template:
AliasName/A
Locate
******
Many people seem to have problems understanding how the "Locate and
Talk" facility in AmTALK works, so I try to give a more thorough
explanation.
One of the reasons that the talk protocol went out of fashion recently
is tied to the more and more advancing usage of dynamic IP addresses.
Since you must know the exact host name of a party you want to "talk"
to, it's nearly impossible to talk to someone which normally uses a
dynamic IP address without a means of finding out the address he
currently uses.
You can, for example, find this out if you meet in IRC, but it's pretty
pointless to use talk if you could use the more efficient DCC CHAT
anyway.
AmTALK tried to provide a solution to this problem, the so-called
"Locate facility". How does it work?
Let's assume you want to talk to MrFitz, which ISP's has the domain
"ifx.net". ifx.net provides dynamic IP addresses to it's users, so
everytime MrFitz logs on, he gets a different host name -
"ip69.ifx.net", "ip42.ifx.net" etc.
So, when you want to talk to MrFitz, you don't know which address he's
currently using. Locate, however, does the trick of asking all of the
potential IPs he may be on for a user with the name of "MrFitz", and if
you're lucky, the correct AmTALK at the remote end will respond with
"Here I am!" and voilá, you know where to talk to.
Actually, in order for "Locate" to work, you must know at least one of
the IP addresses that MrFitz normally has - you might have gotten it
from the last time you saw him on IRC, or when he "talk"ed to you etc.
You can't use "*.ifx.net" or just "ifx.net" as a anchor address to
Locate, btw - it must be a valid hostname which results in a IP address
record.
Also, you must know the exact username that he uses at his end, because
this is the anchor at which the identification takes place. If you try
to locate "mike@ip42.ifx.net", you will fail, because his AmTALK will
only responds to queries for the username "Mike". The local username is
normally equivalent to the email name of the person, or the username in
his IRC userhost address. If you are unsure, just ask.
Technically, "Locate" works by assuming that the ISP gives out all his
Dynamic IP addresses from within a single Class-C network. It takes the
host name you feed to it, masks out the network part and then queries
all 254 IP addresses of this net with a short UDP packet bearing the
username. If the correct site is hit, it will respond with a
acknowledge packet. This is a very brute force approach to the
problem, but has the advantage of not relying to any global or
ISP-local "talk hostname servers". The bandwidth waste caused by the
packet flood is comparable to WWW or usenet comp.sys.*.advocacy
hierarchies, and therefore "Locate" should not be used lightly.
Index
*****
ARexx commands AREXX
Configuration The GUI
Contents, Table of Top
Copyright Information Copyright
Description Description
Features Description
GUI The GUI
Installation Installation
Support Copyright
TALK protocol Description
The Locate function Locate