Party

Version 2.12
Jan Wolter

Party version 2.12 updates party to make it work on modern versions of Unix, and make it configure more easily.

Party is a real-time chat program for Unix systems. It simulates a party line, where any number of users can talk at the same time - if you type a line of text, everyone else sees it immediately.

Chat programs are pretty common these days. Party wasn't the first, but it was an early one. It's antiquity is reflected in the fact that it doesn't support networked systems especially well, nor have a web interface. However, its maturity is reflected in the fact that it has a clean and simple interface, and a good set of well-integrated features that make it easy for first-timers to get into. It remains very popular to this day on several systems.

Portability is OK. Odds are good that it will run on your system, if it is Unix and it isn't too bizarre.

I am no longer doing very active support on this system. I fix bugs, and do occasional portability enhancments.

History

The original version of party was developed by Marcus Watts for System III Unix some time around 1983 for use on the original Mike Myers' M-Net system (this was the second free public-access Unix systems in the world). I got hooked very early, and started making improvements to the look and feel some time around 1985, and had done a complete re-write by 1986. An early version of party migrated to Chinet (the first public-access Unix system in the world) where it sprouted many new features, including channels. Many of those ideas were borrowed back into the M-Net version, with improvements. In later years, some MUD-like features and IRC-like features migrated into party. Party has been heavily used on M-Net, Chinet and Grex for most of its long history, and still is used today on those and other systems.

Features

Documentation

For more detailed information, there is a man page for party here.

Getting It

Current party source may be obtained here.

Sun Jun 8 00:15:48 EDT 2003