[TUHS] BSD talk program?

[Clem Cole]

Yes -- I can give this history.
Kipp wrote an early version for 4.1BSD - but it is not the version in the
releases. It ran on Ernie and did not do as much.
I had used a different program on the PDP-10's and the ARPANET and I
started over when Joy added sockets for 4.1A. I also made the infamous use
of vax integers instead of network integers (and I knew better - but really
did not think about until a few years later when I was at Masscomp and
compiled it for the 68000 -- ugh).  That version still had a couple of bugs
in it (i.e. hung in the 4.1A networking code occasionally), but worked well
enough on the CAD systems.  I went away to a USENIX conference and while I
was gone, my officemate  Peter (Moore) took my code and fixed the problem,
plus he put it into  RCS.  I gave that to Sam and that's the version that
went out in 4.1C and beyond.

Clem


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On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 9:29 AM Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm curious if anyone has any history they can share about the BSD
> "talk" program.
>
> I was fond of this back when it was still (relatively) common, but
> given the way it's architected I definitely see why it fell out of use
> as the Internet grew. Still, does anybody know what the history behind
> it is?  Initially, I thought it was written by Mike Karels, but that
> was just my speculation from SCCS spelunking, and looking at the
> sources from 4.2, I see RCS header strings that indicate it was
> written by "moore" (Peter Moore?).  talk.c says, "Written by Kipp
> Hickman".
>
> It seems to have arrived pretty early on with respect to the
> introduction of TCP/IP in BSD: the README alludes to some things
> coming up in 4.1c. Clem, you seem to have had a hand in it, and are
> credited (along with Peter Moore) for making it work on 4.1a.
>
> So I guess the question is, what was the motivation? Was it just to
> have a more pleasing user-to-user communications experience, or was
> discussion across the network an explicit goal? There's a note in
> talk.c ("Modified to run between hosts by Peter Moore, 8/19/82") that
> suggests this wasn't the original intent. Who thought up the
> character-at-a-time display mode?
>
> Thanks for any insights.
>
>         - Dan C.
>
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