Ikke's Blog

Post details: Good old messaging

May 9
Good old messaging

Davyd talked about integrating good old messaging systems like talk, wall, write and even WinPopup into the GNOME desktop. As it looked like a fun thing to do, I got my hands down on it today.

I still couldn't figure out how to catch wall and other pty-based messages, but I'm sure I will be able to get them working too.

At the moment, WinPopup messages work:

Maybe in-time one should be able to click the message popup and get a simple window allowing the user to reply on the incoming message, but thats to be done later on, first I want to get wall and talk requests working fine.

A little change to smb.conf is needed for this (the "message command" line should be set, I'm using a Python script to send the messages), and one file in the D-BUS system.d to allow the user Samba uses to spawn the message command ("nobody" on my system) to send messages on the system bus.
Obviously pty-based messages shouldn't need a callout anywhere.

Current code isn't ready for release yet (at all), I'll try to get what I got into good shape asap.

Ikke • Linux, Networks, Desktop, Coding CornerPermalink 6 comments

Comments:

Comment from: Jean [Visitor]
Very nice indeed. I do hope this gets integrated!
PermalinkPermalink 05/09/06 @ 14:01
Comment from: Rudd-O [Visitor] · http://rudd-o.com/
Catching wall messages is actually easy, all you have to do is open a pty like kwrited does, and that makes it possible. Of course, catching "write" messages would actually require that the writer writes to your opened pty directly. And catching talk messages wouldn't be bad, if you could keep a lightweight talkd that relayed talk requests to your running Gossip or Gaim instance... much like ktalkd does.
PermalinkPermalink 05/09/06 @ 18:30
Comment from: pabs [Visitor] · http://my.website.was.blocked.com
I'd live to have winpopup/talkd/write/etc in gaim.
PermalinkPermalink 05/09/06 @ 19:57
Comment from: Pete [Visitor]
Looks good to me. Be aware of the years of anguish Windows users spent as the "winpopup" behavior was wide open to the internet and ready to serve.
PermalinkPermalink 05/09/06 @ 21:49
Comment from: Luca [Visitor]
Great, this will be very useful in a company environment, sending and receiving quick messages to co-workers via winpopup (not everybody has an IM installed).
PermalinkPermalink 05/09/06 @ 22:02
Comment from: Ryan [Visitor]
It'd be great if your solution could capture the wall messages in addition to displaying them in a popup so they don't spam every terminal window.
PermalinkPermalink 05/10/06 @ 06:05

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