Re: [9fans] AIM software

["Russ Cox" <rsc@plan9.bell-labs.com>]

especially if you use toc, an aim file server should be trivial.

as for chatting, as long as you only care about text
(and not embellishments like fonts and colors),
using win inside acme to run a simple text
program actually gives you a nice interface.

there's an undocumented -e flag to win that
erases input as it is read (bizarre, i know),
which is really nice for chat interfaces.

for example, in the minimal irc client i wrote,
there are two threads.  one does:

	while(read a message from the network)
		print "<from> message"

the other does:

	while(read a message from the keyboard)
		print "<you> message"

combined with win -e, this has the nice effect
that new messages are inserted before what you're
typing, and then once you hit enter on the line you
are typing,

	message

turns into

	<you> message

to look more like the conversation.

i'd like to see an aim client.
what i'd really like is a generic interface
that clients for aim, irc, icq can use and then there
can be just one client program.

russ