3 ms·

What I really miss is character-at-a-time chat, a la unix 'talk/ntalk/ytalk' or VMS 'PHONE'. It created an intimacy you can't get with line-at-a-time solution,

by dmd 15y ago

What I really miss is character-at-a-time chat, a la unix 'talk/ntalk/ytalk' or VMS 'PHONE'. It created an intimacy you can't get with line-at-a-time solution, and there is, as far as I know, NO modern replacement for it - literally no way at all to do this any more other than actually setting up and using talk and talkd. It's sort of possible to emulate it using something like etherpad, but it's really not at all the same.

aristidb 15y ago
Wave was like that. :-)
- dmd 15y ago
  It wasn't, though - updates were 'chunky' - you'd type a few words, and the other person would see them all appear at once. Even that little bit of loss of real-time destroys the illusion of a shared space.
  - jamesgeck0 15y ago
    Google Docs used to be like that, but Wave was capable of character-by-character updates. You would see updates in larger chunks if latency was high enough, but I've participated in several waves where I could see characters appearing one to three at a time.
StavrosK 15y ago
You can (could?) do it with ICQ, it had an option.
darklajid 15y ago
Interesting. I never thought of this feature as 'intimate'. Most of the time I was annoyed, seeing the other one type o n e c h a r a t a t i m e I prefer waiting for a full line, that (hopefully) makes sense. And I try to convince myself that the person I'm chatting with right now isn't slow as molasses, he just takes a moment of time to think before typing a well-considered reply.
Hoff 15y ago
Ah, VMS PHONE. Where the other party's typing skills (or lack thereof) are on full display. As for the character-at-a-time display, iChat can provide something like that. On Mac OS X circa 10.6, select iChat > Accounts > select an account > and check the Send text as I type checkbox.
- dmd 15y ago
  Again - it sends it in 'chunks' of 5 or 10 chars at a time, which is not what I want.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
slug 15y ago
Here you go (real-time text transmitted in-band over an XMPP session): http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/07/07/2014214/Real-Time-Text-Over-JabberXMPPGoogle-Talk http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/07/07/2014214/Real-Time-Te...

by dmd 15y ago

aristidb 15y ago

Wave was like that. :-)

dmd 15y ago
It wasn't, though - updates were 'chunky' - you'd type a few words, and the other person would see them all appear at once. Even that little bit of loss of real-time destroys the illusion of a shared space.
- jamesgeck0 15y ago
  Google Docs used to be like that, but Wave was capable of character-by-character updates. You would see updates in larger chunks if latency was high enough, but I've participated in several waves where I could see characters appearing one to three at a time.

StavrosK 15y ago

You can (could?) do it with ICQ, it had an option.

darklajid 15y ago

Interesting. I never thought of this feature as 'intimate'. Most of the time I was annoyed, seeing the other one type o n e c h a r a t a t i m e I prefer waiting for a full line, that (hopefully) makes sense. And I try to convince myself that the person I'm chatting with right now isn't slow as molasses, he just takes a moment of time to think before typing a well-considered reply.

Hoff 15y ago

Ah, VMS PHONE. Where the other party's typing skills (or lack thereof) are on full display. As for the character-at-a-time display, iChat can provide something like that. On Mac OS X circa 10.6, select iChat > Accounts > select an account > and check the Send text as I type checkbox.

dmd 15y ago
Again - it sends it in 'chunks' of 5 or 10 chars at a time, which is not what I want.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

slug 15y ago

Here you go (real-time text transmitted in-band over an XMPP session): http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/07/07/2014214/Real-Time-Text-Over-JabberXMPPGoogle-Talk http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/07/07/2014214/Real-Time-Te...