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>I’d rather know what the other person were typing as she typed it. >And it used to be that I did. Long before instant messaging programs even existed, there w

>I’d rather know what the other person were typing as she typed it. >And it used to be that I did. Long before instant messaging programs even existed, there was a Unix program for chatting called “talk” (and variations like “ytalk” and “ntalk”). The interface was not like that of chat programs today, where you type a message in the bottom, then hit Enter to send it over the wire to your friend. Instead, talk split the screen in half and transmitted everything you typed letter by letter. If you typed something and then deleted it, your friend would see the whole gaffe. Your text and your friend’s text were never combined into sequence. I have to admit, i'm not sure if I share the author's enthusiasm for such a system. It would be heavily dependent on who i'm talking to. If this were the default way of messaging with no other options, this would get a hard no from me. But, with certain people in certain situations, a modern version of this would actually be pretty nice. Still, I wish overall there were more options for disabling things like typing indicators, read reports, constant online status indicators altogether. My biggest problem isn't so much their existence, but the inability to fully disable them in most cases.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
Email is all of that disabled.
- boogies 6y ago
  (as long as you your client doesn’t load tracking pixels wrong) Edit: the article: “Gmail tells you if your friend is typing, and whether there’s any text left in the box.”
  - snazz 6y ago
    Doesn't Gmail load and proxy all external images anyway? Am I remembering wrong? Of course, not everyone uses Gmail, but if it loads all images whether or not they're opened, tracking pixels are much less useful.
    - boogies 6y ago
      IIRC their servers cache them the first time you open an email, only preventing them from triggering again if you open the email more than once EDIT: it looks like it doesn’t even do that, and “might even benefit email marketing, for sure not blow it up” if this isn’t out of date: https://blog.filippo.io/how-the-new-gmail-image-proxy-works-and-what-this-means-for-you/#bonusthearstechnicaarticle https://blog.filippo.io/how-the-new-gmail-image-proxy-works-...
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  I wish email supported this at the corporate level. It wastes time when someone sends an email to a team of 5 people and they’re all independently working on the same reply.
dguo 6y ago
I loved this feature when I first experienced it in Google Wave. I don't think it belongs everywhere, but exactly as the article author says, it makes the conversation feel smoother and more like I am actually talking to someone in real life because I can think about what they are saying as they are typing it. In a real life conversation, you digest in real time as you hear the other person. You don't have to wait for chunks of their thoughts.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  (Talking about Google Wave) I liked it in theory! In practice it felt super awkward and almost privacy-invasive, but I think that's because we weren't use to it. If it became commonplace, it would ultimately seem more natural.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  All it did was have two people ditch what they were writing and perpetually respond to what they thought the other person was writing.
  - dguo 6y ago
    When it worked out well though, there was an incredible feeling of being in sync with the other person.
- dunnevens 6y ago
  I never used Wave much, but I'm old enough to have used (the shell program) Talk many, many times to communicate with my friends on the university system. I really hated the live typing feature. In order not to seem rude, you had to focus on the conversation so you were ready to respond as soon as the other person was done. You had to be patient with the typos and slow typing of some people. And even if the deleted parts of the conversation had relevant information, you had to at least pretend to ignore whatever was typed & deleted. It had all the limitations of online communication (no facial cues, no body language, no tone of voice) but didn't have the good grace to be asynchronous which would let you do more than one thing at a time. It was so frustrating to be stuck in one place staring at letter after letter slowly appearing. It felt like all the disadvantages of an in-person conversation without any of the advantages. It was such a relief when I finally convinced friends to rely more on email or chatting in places like MUDs. And sorry to rant at you a little. It's just I can still remember the frustration vividly after 30 years.
yarone 6y ago
Lots of "Live chat" customer-support type systems do it this way. You can see what your prospective customers are typing as they type. Every character, backspace, etc. A bit creepy and violates privacy expectations, I think.
- whiddershins 6y ago
  What. Someone should do something about this. I absolutely am shocked by this.
  - drewrv 6y ago
    It is really terrible. https://lifehacker.com/customer-service-chat-services-see-everything-you-type-1830680747 https://lifehacker.com/customer-service-chat-services-see-ev...
  - recursive 6y ago
    Do what? I would have been surprised if this wasn't the case. Websites see every keystroke you make while their targeted. People should realize that. If they don't, they're in for some rude surprises.
    - cooper12 6y ago
      The browsers could buffer the text in text fields until the field loses focus (clicked another field or submit) or hit enter. It would break search-as-you-type functionality, but not the biggest loss in the world.
      - knome 6y ago
        devs would just catch keyboard events and simulate text fields you're not getting this one back in pandora's box
        sli 6y ago
        There's always the option of typing your stuff in another program entirely and copy/pasting. Sure, not everyone would be willing to do that, but it's really not that inconvenient if you know your keyboard shortcuts (ctrl+a, ctrl+c, alt+tab, ctrl+v in that order, easy for a competent computer user). And socially anxious people may be more comfortable with that overall.
jghn 6y ago
The live feed of talk/ytalk/etc was a mixed bag. If the person you were chatting with was a decent typist it was great as you could process what they were writing as they were typing. But much more often the person on the other end was super slow, constantly making and then slowly fixing their typos, etc. I spent most of my time getting frustrated watching them muddle through
boogies 6y ago
> in certain situations, a modern version of this would actually be pretty nice I’ve done something similar before in Google Docs, and recently in CodiMD/HedgeDoc (which is much nicer and simpler, and doesn’t have comments except for html ones, reveal.js slide notes, and opt-in Disqus on the published doc). I think Etherpad could be used almost identically to talk, except with color coding differentiating each user instead of panes.
UI_at_80x24 6y ago
This is how it used to work on BBS's. I had a 1200baud modem connected to my C64, and some of the time I could type faster then the transmission speed of the connection. It would be 'fun' to be able to type so fast that the computer would end up buffering the letters..words...sentences and I could watch what I had typed scroll out to the terminal. This was the single biggest motivator in learning how to touch-type. I do know that sometimes the connection was just so poor that it wasn't because I was awesome, it was just a shitty connection. But I never let that truth get in the way of my ego. =)
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  I wonder what kind of overhead you were dealing with there. As raw characters that would be at least 120 per second. If you send a TCP packet every second it would hold 80. Maybe the connection was bad sometimes but would it really have been so bad that an already-low-frequency modem consistently ran at less than 10% speed? My mind races thinking about the ways to configure a data stream to lose so much speed.
  - u801e 6y ago
    > My mind races thinking about the ways to configure a data stream to lose so much speed. Not quite the same peripheral, but the 1541 disk drive was designed to be backwards compatible with older Commodore models. As a result, it had a very low read and write speed compared to other computer models. I wonder if it was a similar case for the modem.
hnaccy 6y ago
There are forums that support this functionality and it's actually kinda nice (but hectic with too many people in a thread).
- bemmu 6y ago
  Which ones for example?
samplatt 6y ago
If you want to hide the writing process, there's always email (and other solutions). I will always ALWAYS prefer the instantly-visible option. In a world devoid of vital visual contexts like vocal inflection and body language, a visible "stream of consciousness" is so meaningful. There's a steadily-growing norm where people freely ignore instant-messages if responding quickly doesn't benefit them, but sometimes the message sender has no other communication recourse for an important and time-sensitive topic, and if you have no idea if they have even read your message then it's very frustrating.

lotsofpulp 6y ago

Email is all of that disabled.

boogies 6y ago
(as long as you your client doesn’t load tracking pixels wrong) Edit: the article: “Gmail tells you if your friend is typing, and whether there’s any text left in the box.”
- snazz 6y ago
  Doesn't Gmail load and proxy all external images anyway? Am I remembering wrong? Of course, not everyone uses Gmail, but if it loads all images whether or not they're opened, tracking pixels are much less useful.
  - boogies 6y ago
    IIRC their servers cache them the first time you open an email, only preventing them from triggering again if you open the email more than once EDIT: it looks like it doesn’t even do that, and “might even benefit email marketing, for sure not blow it up” if this isn’t out of date: https://blog.filippo.io/how-the-new-gmail-image-proxy-works-and-what-this-means-for-you/#bonusthearstechnicaarticle https://blog.filippo.io/how-the-new-gmail-image-proxy-works-...
Scoundreller 6y ago
I wish email supported this at the corporate level. It wastes time when someone sends an email to a team of 5 people and they’re all independently working on the same reply.

dguo 6y ago

I loved this feature when I first experienced it in Google Wave. I don't think it belongs everywhere, but exactly as the article author says, it makes the conversation feel smoother and more like I am actually talking to someone in real life because I can think about what they are saying as they are typing it. In a real life conversation, you digest in real time as you hear the other person. You don't have to wait for chunks of their thoughts.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
(Talking about Google Wave) I liked it in theory! In practice it felt super awkward and almost privacy-invasive, but I think that's because we weren't use to it. If it became commonplace, it would ultimately seem more natural.
hombre_fatal 6y ago
All it did was have two people ditch what they were writing and perpetually respond to what they thought the other person was writing.
- dguo 6y ago
  When it worked out well though, there was an incredible feeling of being in sync with the other person.
dunnevens 6y ago
I never used Wave much, but I'm old enough to have used (the shell program) Talk many, many times to communicate with my friends on the university system. I really hated the live typing feature. In order not to seem rude, you had to focus on the conversation so you were ready to respond as soon as the other person was done. You had to be patient with the typos and slow typing of some people. And even if the deleted parts of the conversation had relevant information, you had to at least pretend to ignore whatever was typed & deleted. It had all the limitations of online communication (no facial cues, no body language, no tone of voice) but didn't have the good grace to be asynchronous which would let you do more than one thing at a time. It was so frustrating to be stuck in one place staring at letter after letter slowly appearing. It felt like all the disadvantages of an in-person conversation without any of the advantages. It was such a relief when I finally convinced friends to rely more on email or chatting in places like MUDs. And sorry to rant at you a little. It's just I can still remember the frustration vividly after 30 years.

yarone 6y ago

Lots of "Live chat" customer-support type systems do it this way. You can see what your prospective customers are typing as they type. Every character, backspace, etc. A bit creepy and violates privacy expectations, I think.

whiddershins 6y ago
What. Someone should do something about this. I absolutely am shocked by this.
- drewrv 6y ago
  It is really terrible. https://lifehacker.com/customer-service-chat-services-see-everything-you-type-1830680747 https://lifehacker.com/customer-service-chat-services-see-ev...
- recursive 6y ago
  Do what? I would have been surprised if this wasn't the case. Websites see every keystroke you make while their targeted. People should realize that. If they don't, they're in for some rude surprises.
  - cooper12 6y ago
    The browsers could buffer the text in text fields until the field loses focus (clicked another field or submit) or hit enter. It would break search-as-you-type functionality, but not the biggest loss in the world.
    - knome 6y ago
      devs would just catch keyboard events and simulate text fields you're not getting this one back in pandora's box
      - sli 6y ago
        There's always the option of typing your stuff in another program entirely and copy/pasting. Sure, not everyone would be willing to do that, but it's really not that inconvenient if you know your keyboard shortcuts (ctrl+a, ctrl+c, alt+tab, ctrl+v in that order, easy for a competent computer user). And socially anxious people may be more comfortable with that overall.

jghn 6y ago

The live feed of talk/ytalk/etc was a mixed bag. If the person you were chatting with was a decent typist it was great as you could process what they were writing as they were typing. But much more often the person on the other end was super slow, constantly making and then slowly fixing their typos, etc. I spent most of my time getting frustrated watching them muddle through

boogies 6y ago

> in certain situations, a modern version of this would actually be pretty nice I’ve done something similar before in Google Docs, and recently in CodiMD/HedgeDoc (which is much nicer and simpler, and doesn’t have comments except for html ones, reveal.js slide notes, and opt-in Disqus on the published doc). I think Etherpad could be used almost identically to talk, except with color coding differentiating each user instead of panes.

UI_at_80x24 6y ago

This is how it used to work on BBS's. I had a 1200baud modem connected to my C64, and some of the time I could type faster then the transmission speed of the connection. It would be 'fun' to be able to type so fast that the computer would end up buffering the letters..words...sentences and I could watch what I had typed scroll out to the terminal. This was the single biggest motivator in learning how to touch-type. I do know that sometimes the connection was just so poor that it wasn't because I was awesome, it was just a shitty connection. But I never let that truth get in the way of my ego. =)

Dylan16807 6y ago
I wonder what kind of overhead you were dealing with there. As raw characters that would be at least 120 per second. If you send a TCP packet every second it would hold 80. Maybe the connection was bad sometimes but would it really have been so bad that an already-low-frequency modem consistently ran at less than 10% speed? My mind races thinking about the ways to configure a data stream to lose so much speed.
- u801e 6y ago
  > My mind races thinking about the ways to configure a data stream to lose so much speed. Not quite the same peripheral, but the 1541 disk drive was designed to be backwards compatible with older Commodore models. As a result, it had a very low read and write speed compared to other computer models. I wonder if it was a similar case for the modem.

hnaccy 6y ago

There are forums that support this functionality and it's actually kinda nice (but hectic with too many people in a thread).

bemmu 6y ago
Which ones for example?

samplatt 6y ago

If you want to hide the writing process, there's always email (and other solutions). I will always ALWAYS prefer the instantly-visible option. In a world devoid of vital visual contexts like vocal inflection and body language, a visible "stream of consciousness" is so meaningful. There's a steadily-growing norm where people freely ignore instant-messages if responding quickly doesn't benefit them, but sometimes the message sender has no other communication recourse for an important and time-sensitive topic, and if you have no idea if they have even read your message then it's very frustrating.