


      TALK(1)                    (Bull-SPS9)                    TALK(1)



      NAME
           talk - talk to another user

      SYNOPSIS
           talk user [ tty ]

      DESCRIPTION
           Talk is a utility that enables two users to interactively
           communicate on a character basis on split screens.  It is
           intended to supersede the write utility for interactive use
           by providing a more useful service.

           Talk is invoked with a user name and an optional tty name
           thus :-

                   talk user [ tty8 ]


           If user happens to be logged in more than once and no tty
           name is supplied, talk will use the first entry in /etc/utmp
           (as used by who).

           Talk will then attempt to notify the requested user that you
           are trying to talk with him.  Trying to talk to a user may
           fail for two reasons :-

                   The requested user is not logged in.

                   The requested user has disabled messages (via mesg)


           If the user doesn't answer, talk will keep notifying him.
           After a reasonable number of retries, talk will give up and
           exit.

           To reply to a user trying to talk to you, you should type
           talk user (as shown in the request message).

           When your party has connected you may both begin to talk
           (this will be indicated by the bell ringing on your
           terminal).  The name of the person you are talking to and an
           elapsed time indicator will appear in the centre of the
           screen.  You will notice that there are bursts of input and
           output - this is due to the way they are handled within
           talk.  In order to avoid busy waiting, a sleep of one second
           occurs whenever there is no activity.









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      TALK(1)                    (Bull-SPS9)                    TALK(1)



           Certain characters when typed have special meaning :-


           ctrl-l    -    Refresh the screen.  Useful if the
                          screen gets corrupted.

           ctrl-d    -    Disconnect - finish talking.

           ctrl-g    -    Ring the bell on other users terminal.

           delete    -    Delete the character before the cursor
                          (works backwards over lines as well).
                          Uses your normal delete key.

           ctrl-c    -    Forced exit.  This has the same effect
                          as disconnect, although it may be
                          used at any stage of the proceedings
                          (ie. before connection has occured).



      FILES
           /etc/utmp               to find recipient's tty
           /tmp/tr_xxxxxxxx        temporary files (named pipes) for
           /tmp/tw_xxxxxxxx        communication pickup

      BUGS
           One second delay between bursts of activity (to be fixed
           when using version 8).

           Restricted to the domain of current machine.
























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