One upon a time ...
... i got some spare time, and a system connected to the X.25
network. Soon it became more and more interesting, to start
some sort of communication with all the hackers coming into
that system. The system-utilities did not offer too much
comfort ( did you ever try to talk to three people at the same
time using the 'write'-command ? ). So i started thinking and playing
a little bit and i was investigating the features that Xenix 2.5
was offering me for some sort of interprocess communication.
The results were lousy. Microsoft didn't implement the multiplexed
files anymore, not to talk of message queues, shared memory etc.
I could use data-files, of course. Opening files exclusively,
writing one line of text, closing them again. Needless to say another
word to that.
... but time went on, new operating systems were invented, Microsoft
proudly presented their first revision of Xenix 3.0, and I got
named pipes. What a progress!
During those days, the second version of my conference-utility started
its work. A few positive aspects of the named pipes made me keep
to them: they offer some sort of buffering between the processes,
they are available on many unix-derivates, they are easy to handle.
Many features have been included in the meantime, some rework
has been done on several parts of the software, and some good ideas
are still pending.
As many of the users asked me for that program ( to develop it further
on ), I thought, it would be a good idea, to put it on the network.
It's basic concept was to keep it simple and stable. I did not
include fullscreen-options ( many of the users on the system
mentioned above just use 300 baud lines ), and I didn't include
message editing and message lockout ( I'd need all the characters
one by one, as soon as they are typed in; All the X.25 users would have
to pay for every character, they are typing ).
I hope, you'll enjoy that program ( its easy to install ), and let
me know, wheather it's useful, needs to be improved, or you have
any other comments. The program is by no means perfect, I know
several caveats, minor bugs etc. The program has grown from several
dozen lines during the years, and I still plan to extend it.
Feel free to call the system mentioned above and have a look to it.
(X.25:  0262 45 8900 40004, login: guest).
My uucp-mail-adress is:   ...!mcvax!unido!altger!korn
Hans Korneder, DataVision, May 1987

revision history:
1.0  -  altos 586 xenix 2.5
2.0  -  altos 3068 unixV.2
3.0  -  altos 3068 unixV.2
        ascii transfer only
        rearranged the location of the named pipes
        put to public domain
3.1  -  altos 3068 unixV.2  29.may 1987
        rearranged the signal-handling
        corrected a problem with sccanf(buf,"%6d",...), that
        caused messages starting with numers to be ignored.
        ignore empty lines
		do timeouts for a) the server writing to user-answer-pipes
		b) opens to user-answer-pipes ( both caused severe problems! )