Talk

A guide to its versions and use

Talk is a program which allows two, and in some cases more, users to communicate with each other in real-time, as though they were talking on a phone (hence the name talk). The main difference, of course, is that each person is typing instead of talking.

Talk consists of not only a program, but also a set of protocols which allow communication to take place. There have been two major protocols: one was used in 4.2BSD and earlier releases, the other in 4.3BSD and later releases. These two protocols, unfortunately, are incompatible and one cannot be used with the other. Below is a list of all talk programs available and their relative abilities/merits. The list is ordered in terms of the likelihood that the program will succeed in making a connection.

Versions of talk

1. ytalk

   This is a version of talk with offers the best chance of making a connection. It understands both protocols and appears to work with various versions within the same protocol which will not necessarily work with themselves. In addition, it has auto wraparound and the ability to carry on a session with multiple people at the same time (providing all are using ytalk ). When used on an X terminal, it opens a separate window for each person. This version works with all the previously mentioned versions, and according to the man page, can make a connection with another instance of ytalk even if there is no talk daemon running of one of the machines. Note that there may be problems when attempting to ytalk to multiple people.

   
   

2. talk

   This incarnation of talk is a completely peculiar beast unto itself. It is the existence of such things which makes the whole thing complicated. This version has a hard time communicating with any other version of talk, but is a moderate bet when the others have not succeeded in making a connection.

   
   

Using talk

To use talk, simply type

talk user@host

where user is the person you want to contact, and host is the name of that user's machine. If you're talking to someone on the same machine as you, you can use the shorter form

talk user

Note:

For more information, see the manual pages for talk (1), ytalk (1), and telnet (1C).

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