Orville Write Homepage

Version 2.55
Jan Wolter

Orville write is a reimplementation of the Unix write program adds many nice features while remaining close to the standard Unix program in spirit. It has been very heavily used on M-Net since 1985 and on Grex since 1991, as well as a few other systems. It is a ground-up reimplementation using no proprietary code. It's available under a Berkeley-style license (no charge, no restriction on commercial use, just don't take my name off of it). The current version is very portable and should be easy to install on most Unix-flavored systems.

Orville write was written for use on M-Net and Grex, both public access unix systems in Ann Arbor, where writing to each other was a popular adjunct to the conferencing and chat areas. As such, many of the features are designed to support a system featuring a delicate mix of novice users and hostile pranksters, plus a lot of people who just want to talk. It's user interface is pretty much identical to the normal write program, but it offers many low-key extensions and improvements.

We strongly recommend installing Orville Write on any system where 'write' is heavily used. The added complexity is probably not worth the trouble on systems where there are few users or where talking to each other is not a big part of the culture.

Features

• It is always possible to write someone who is writing you, even if his permissions are off.

• Doing "write" without arguments replies to whomever is writing you. Similarly, if you do "write whoever" and whoever is logged in more than once it will always write to the tty he is writing you from. If none of his logins are writing you, the one with the shortest idle time is selected.

• If you write a person who is writing someone else, you will be asked if you want to interupt them before the connection is made.

• All control characters you type are expanded before sending them to the other user.

• When you disconnect, the user will receive an "EOF (your-login)" instead of a simple "EOF". (This is done to aid users in identifying who just did a "write whomever < /etc/termcap" to them. The identification at the head of the messages scrolls off.)

• It is possible to set up a link to write (called, perhaps, "jot") that will send each character to the other user as you type it. This is less boring for the other user, since he doesn't have to sit there waiting for you to finish a whole line before he has anything to read. However, it will not go into character-by-character mode until the other person has replied. (Since it's really annoying to have loose characters from someone jotting you getting mixed into the output from other programs you are running.)

• It is possible to set up a link to write (called, perhaps, "tel") to send quick one-line telegram messages to other users. Many people like to use this as a way to hold a conversation by sending telegrams back and forth while still doing something else on their terminals. You can always write or telegram a person for up to four minutes after he sent you a tel, even if his permissions are off. There are provisions to prevent flooding people with tels, limiting the number of telegrams that can be sent within a specific period of time.

• You can set message permissions to allow only selected people to write you, or to block out only selected people. Doing "mesg ye" or "mesg ne" means "yes, with exceptions" and "no, with exceptions" respectively. If you set "ne" then no one can write you except the users whose logins are listed in the .yeswrite file in your home directory. If you set "ye" then everyone can write you except the users whose logins are listed in the .nowrite file in your home directory.

• Setting "mesg -bn" will case the bell not to ring when people write you.

• Doing "write ." writes again to the last person you wrote. This is especially handy with the "tel" command, where you often send a sequence of messages to the same person.

• There is a facility for users to designate themselves as "helpers". Then if a novice does "write help" he is connected to one of the helpers currently not busy writing someone else. If there is more than one candidate, one is selected at random to distribute the workload. It is possible to configure the system so only users listed in a file may designate themselves as helpers. Helpers can do "mesg -h y" to turn on their helper status, or "mesg -h n" to turn it off. This is our main mechanism for helping newusers on M-Net and Grex. We also have the "finger" program display question marks by the names of users who are helpers, though source for finger is not included in this package.

• The "helpers" command lists helpers currently on the system.

• There are two additional shell escapes. Doing "!ls" at the begining of a line does the normal shell escape. Doing "|ls" sends the output to the other user instead of to you. Doing "&ls" sends the output to both of you. These are useful in instructing users about Unix commands through write and for including files into your conversation (with "&cat file").

• When you receive a message from someone who is su'ed to some other account, you are notified of both of his identities. The name from /etc/utmp is, of course, the one you reply to, but in many circumstances this is not as reliable an indicator of the identity of the person who is writing you as his uid, so mentioning this name as well can reduce confusion.

• There is a configuration file which an administrator can edit to, among other thing, disallow piping files through write by disabling the & and | shell escapes and requiring standard input to the program to be a tty. This is meant to be turned on when you have a temporary excess of twits annoying other users.

• The "mesg" command may be used to set a flag telling the system to record telegrams sent to you. If you have this turned on, the "huh" command will redisplay the last message sent. This is useful when telegrams get swallowed by other activity on your screen.

• It is possible to separately set "write" and "telegram" permissions with the "mesg" command. Thus you can depermit telegrams being sent to you, without depermitting writes. You can also specify a preference for being written in character mode or line mode.

• The "mesg" program may optionally be compiled to allow a disconnect option. Doing "mesg N" (as opposed to "mesg n") will not only turn you message permissions off, but disconnect anyone who is currently writing you. Doing "mesg d" disconnects the other user without turning your permissions off.

• There is an "amin" program (that's "am in", not the Ugandan guy), that lets you do "amin vi filename". This runs "vi filename" normally, but if anyone writes you while you are running that process, he will be told that you are running "vi" and asked if he still wants to write you. "amin -n vi file" just turns your message permissions off for the duration of the vi session, restoring them when you are done. "amin -np vi file" will record any telegrams anyone send you while you are editing, and automatically display them when you are done editing.

Caveats

As mentioned in the HELPERS discussion, we have made some associated mods to the finger program. I'm not currently supporting any version of finger, so you're on your own if you want to do things like flag helpers on the finger screen. We've also adpated ntalkd to respect Orville write permissions. A copy of our modified ntalkd is available, though not fully supported.

Our original purpose in rewriting write was that our old system (before you were born, kid) had people's tty's writable to others when their message perms were on, and this led to too much "cat /etc/termcap > /dev/tty04" kind of stuff. This write program supports a choice of two different workarounds for that problem, but neither is simple to install. You either have to modify login (and possibly finger and other programs) or you have to live with some inconveniences. Of course, no modern Unix systems have this problem (tty's are owned by some "terminal" or "tty" group and only group permissions are ever turned on). So this is really academic these days and there should be no problem installing write.

Getting It

orville-write-2.55.tar.gz

Ntalkd-0.10 (not the latest version) modified for use with Orville write:

ntalkd-0.10ORV2.tgz