utalk

What is utalk?

utalk is a one-to-one text chat program alternative to the Unix 'talk' client, which uses a more responsive protocol built over UDP (instead of TCP). It is written in C. Because its new and different protocol it's not compatible with other talk clients so both parties must use utalk.

utalk features:

• utalk uses a protocol, based on UDP, which ensures a quick response even over links with high packet loss, by displaying information as it arrives even if it is out of order. So if you type "hello world" and the "w" is lost, the other party sees "hello  orld", and a few seconds later the "w" pops into place.
• utalk allows editing of previously typed text, including scrollback, deletion, overstrike and insertion.
• When scrolling back in your text window, you can either have the remote party's display scroll too, or not.
• utalk is fully 8-bit clean, but translation of iso_8859_1 codes into 7-bit ASCII can be activated for 7-bit terminals.
• utalk can talk to both the old BSD 4.2/Sun talk daemon and the newer BSD 4.{3,4} one, and users on machines having a different daemon each can connect to each other. To distinguish utalk rings from ordinary talk rings, utalk sends the username prefixed with a '!'.
• utalk has a direct client-server mode that allows establishing a connection without talk daemons.
• utalk lets you rebind your keys, and includes (limited) vi and emacs emulation modes.
• you can define aliases for addresses of people to ring or hostnames to ring them on.
• you can resize the terminal window and utalk adapts the screen accordingly.
• you can set a "topic" for the conversation.

Wishlist:

• Encryption via DTLS, OTP or OTR.
• Complete the embedded help system.

Downloading:

• Download the latest utalk (version 1.0.2) in tarred and gzipped (compressed) form: utalk-1.0.2.tar.gz
  view all files: HTTP, FTP
• Read the CHANGELOG file
• Read the INSTALL file
• Read the formatted man page for utalk
• Read about the utalk PROTOCOL
• Project page at ourproject.org

License:

utalk is distributed under the GNU General Public License:

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
    any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.