Here's another question about everyones tilde usage, and maybe
some food for thought:

I can see how a shared unix/linux system is a social construct.
People are sharing resources like saving their stuff in a common
file tree. Also, right from the beginning UNIX has supported
direct communication like motd, write and the very basic news
system described in *The UNIX Programming Environment* by
Kernighan and Pike. Using these systems users are literally
meeting and communicating on their one system.

However, while most of these basic services are still there,
they've been superseeded decades ago; by Email, Netnews and IRC.
Even talk and finger transcend the one system, making the net the
place people are actally meeting.

And so the question here is: in the tildeverse it seems to be
common lingo to meet on this or that tilde. Which seems to make
sense especially for the special interest tildes like breadpunk
or cosmic. But don't those users actually rather meet in the
#cosmic or #breadpunk irc channels? or the respective newsgroups?
That would be quite different from meeting on a particular single
system, wouln't it?

To ask the other way around, how much do folks actually use the
traditional communications systems like write, when interacting
on a single system?

Cheers,

lkh
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On 2022-08-06, <lkh@cosmic.voyage> <lkh@cosmic.voyage> wrote:

Here's another question about everyones tilde usage, and maybe
some food for thought:

I can see how a shared unix/linux system is a social construct.
People are sharing resources like saving their stuff in a common
file tree. Also, right from the beginning UNIX has supported
direct communication like motd, write and the very basic news
system described in *The UNIX Programming Environment* by
Kernighan and Pike. Using these systems users are literally
meeting and communicating on their one system.

However, while most of these basic services are still there,
they've been superseeded decades ago; by Email, Netnews and IRC.
Even talk and finger transcend the one system, making the net the
place people are actally meeting.

And so the question here is: in the tildeverse it seems to be
common lingo to meet on this or that tilde. Which seems to make
sense especially for the special interest tildes like breadpunk
or cosmic. But don't those users actually rather meet in the
#cosmic or #breadpunk irc channels? or the respective newsgroups?
That would be quite different from meeting on a particular single
system, wouln't it?

To ask the other way around, how much do folks actually use the
traditional communications systems like write, when interacting
on a single system?

Cheers,

lkh

In such case, I'd say ITS was best suited, because it has no perms and everyone
shared its projects everywhere, a true hackers' dream, and basically what
RMS used.
I still use daily some stuff from that OS, such as Maxima under OpenBSD (Macsyma?).
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On Sat, 6 Aug 2022, lkh wrote:

However, while most of these basic services are still there,
they've been superseeded decades ago; by Email

Actually, Unix-local email (i.e. `mail` command) originated within
Unix itself, has been available from the *first* edition of AT&T UNIX
circa 1971; thus qualifies as one of the Unix social interaction facilities.

What this program originally did was simply appending the message to the recepient user's inbox (MBOX) file; and recepient would run `mail` command without parameter to page through (and manipulate) this file.

When ARPANET mail (i.e. "email" in modern sense) came along, it just bolted standardized headers and addressing scheme into the message
that this program send; making it possible for `mail` program to recognize foreign address and post the message through appropriate handler program
to send tthat mail over to different host, through whatever mechanism
that could be utilized. (FTP, UUCP, etc. to SMTP like it's used today)

One can still use this `mail` command to send message to other local user
today (use `mail SOMEONE` where "SOMEONE" is Unix username, without `@`).
On modern implementation of `mail`, as far as I understand,
it will pass the mail to system's MTA (on pubnix/Tilde system,
that would probably be a fully-featured Internet-routable MTA/MDA)
to do the actual delivery. This means the message would end up in
target user's familiar Internet mailbox, whether local MBOX-based,
local maildir-based, IMAP-based, or ~/.forward -ed.

Nice side effect of this is you can use this old-school `mail` program
to send an Internet email on such system; but a less-nice side effect
is you probably cannot use this old-school `mail` program to read email
sent to you unless your system's MDA is configured to deliver emails
to you in traditional MBOX-in-homedir (or MBOX in spooldir) fashion;
and you would have to use whatever Internet email program you're
already using instead.

finger transcend the one system

Fingering user without `@` is a strictly local operation.
You'll notice the difference immediately on systems with EfingerD daemon
(like Tilde.club, Tilde.team, and Tilde.instute)
that allows user to provide custom Internet Finger status text.

For example, if someone run `finger xwindows` on Tilde.club,
the information would be gathered via system calls and files;
and that person would see my (actual) login stats
as well as my ~/.project and ~/.plan content. No daemon is involved.

However, if someone rather run `finger xwindows@tilde.club` there
or from somewhere out there on the Internet, the Internet Finger daemon (EfingerD in this case) would handle the request,
my Internet Finger banner would be printed instead
(which in my case, contain ASCII art and ~/.plan content,
but devoid of actual login stats).

To ask the other way around, how much do folks actually use the
traditional communications systems like write, when interacting
on a single system?

I'm reluctant to use `write` (or `wall`); mainly because people today spend large chunk of terminal time in full screen TUI applications
rather than traditional line-oriented programs operating directly
on top of TTY. [1] This means apart from the message polluting the
receipient's workspace, the message text tend to get mangled
(or disappeared) as soon as the foreground program redraw the screen;
which means the message (apart from being annoying) is also hard to read.

This does not even count users who use multiple TTYs/VTYs at the same time (very common these days due to terminal multiplexers and graphical
terminal emulators); which one should the sender `write` to, that it would catch the attention in timely fashion? I'm doubt `write`'s built-in
heuristics would help that much in this case.

For `talk`; I do wish that Tilde.club has a functional `talk` implementation. (Currently, it got a YTalk without the actual daemon runing, which would just hang when one run the client) Personally, I would prefer a `talk` implementation that works in peer-to-peer fashion over Unix stream socket residing in recepient's home directory without any central daemon;
but I hadn't tried to seek out and see if there is any actual `talk` implementation that works this way.

But don't those users actually rather meet in the
[...]
respective newsgroups?

I actually treat Newsgroups very much as a local facility,
just with wormholes that make things from "the other side(s)"
magically appear. (Considering that I actually read your post
in-spool on-Tilde with `less` and posted this reply via `inews`)

Regards,
~xwindows


[1] When was the last time you edited text file in `ed`, `ex`, or `sed`
rather than the likes of `nano`, `vim` or `emacs`?
Or when was the last time you read/sent mail using `mail`/`sendmail`
rather than the likes of `alpine` or `mutt`?
--
xwindows' gallery of freely-licensed artworks
https://tilde.club/~xwindows/ http://tilde.club/~xwindows/ gopher://tilde.club/1/~xwindows/
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

xwindows <xwindows@tilde.club> wrote:

On Sat, 6 Aug 2022, lkh wrote:

However, while most of these basic services are still there,
they've been superseeded decades ago; by Email

Actually, Unix-local email (i.e. `mail` command) originated within
Unix itself, has been available from the *first* edition of AT&T UNIX
circa 1971; thus qualifies as one of the Unix social interaction facilities.

What this program originally did was simply appending the message to the recepient user's inbox (MBOX) file; and recepient would run `mail` command without parameter to page through (and manipulate) this file.

I'm always fascinated by the simplicity of early UNIX solutions. The UNIX philosophy at it's best.

Actually just your free form description would suffice to build a local
mail system on short notice, just with the basic tools.

Nice side effect of this is you can use this old-school `mail` program
to send an Internet email on such system; but a less-nice side effect
is you probably cannot use this old-school `mail` program to read email
sent to you unless your system's MDA is configured to deliver emails
to you in traditional MBOX-in-homedir (or MBOX in spooldir) fashion;
and you would have to use whatever Internet email program you're
already using instead.

On most *nix Systems, mail still get's appended to /var/mail/<username>, doesn't it? Just like in the early days ...

finger transcend the one system

Fingering user without `@` is a strictly local operation.
You'll notice the difference immediately on systems with EfingerD daemon (like Tilde.club, Tilde.team, and Tilde.instute)
that allows user to provide custom Internet Finger status text.

Intersting, I didn't know that basic finger works locally. Again, just
as with basic mail, I could totally see how to implement a basic local
finger command just with the standard UNIX tools.

For example, if someone run `finger xwindows` on Tilde.club,
the information would be gathered via system calls and files;
and that person would see my (actual) login stats
as well as my ~/.project and ~/.plan content. No daemon is involved.

However, if someone rather run `finger xwindows@tilde.club` there
or from somewhere out there on the Internet, the Internet Finger daemon (EfingerD in this case) would handle the request,
my Internet Finger banner would be printed instead
(which in my case, contain ASCII art and ~/.plan content,
but devoid of actual login stats).

Interesting, implementations obviously vary. While Linux finger deamons
don't send any login stats to remote requests, NetBSD does ...
not sure it that's a good idea.

To ask the other way around, how much do folks actually use the
traditional communications systems like write, when interacting
on a single system?

I'm reluctant to use `write` (or `wall`); mainly because people today spend large chunk of terminal time in full screen TUI applications
rather than traditional line-oriented programs operating directly
on top of TTY. [1] This means apart from the message polluting the receipient's workspace, the message text tend to get mangled
(or disappeared) as soon as the foreground program redraw the screen;
which means the message (apart from being annoying) is also hard to read.

Right, using write is probably not a good idea. And translating the
application to terminal multiplexers and desktop environments would
probably seem too unwieldy.

(Currently, it got a YTalk without the actual daemon runing, which would just hang when one run the client) Personally, I would prefer a `talk` implementation that works in peer-to-peer fashion over Unix stream socket residing in recepient's home directory without any central daemon;
but I hadn't tried to seek out and see if there is any actual `talk` implementation that works this way.

I like the idea, but looking at talk(1), doesn't talk have the same
issues as write(1), with users logged in on multiple terminals?

But don't those users actually rather meet in the
[...]
respective newsgroups?

I actually treat Newsgroups very much as a local facility,
just with wormholes that make things from "the other side(s)"
magically appear. (Considering that I actually read your post
in-spool on-Tilde with `less` and posted this reply via `inews`)

I like that, so we meet on certain systems, while having mystical
glimpses of users on other systems, too.

Regards,
~xwindows

Hey, thanks for your interesting reply!

Best,

~lkh
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