PHONE(1)						      General Commands Manual							  PHONE(1)

NAME

       phone - communicate with other users in real-time

SYNOPSIS

       phone [ user@host [tty] ]

DESCRIPTION

       Phone  allows  for  two	or  more people to interact in a conversation across a machine or network, providing a form of conference calling.
       Each participant has a window in which to type. The first line of each window is a header showing who is in the window, like:

	  ---- root@cory on console (Commodore Cory) --------------

       The login name and tty are automatically determined, and the real name is taken from the password file, which may be overridden by  setting
       the  NAME environment variable (see csh(1) for further details.)  Users may join or leave a conversation at any point in time, and the win-
       dows will be automatically resized and redrawn.

USAGE

       When you are being paged by another person, a message like this will appear on your screen:

	    Message from the Telephone_Operator@host at time ...
	    phone: connection requested by user@host
	    phone: respond with "phone user@host"

       You may answer the phone simply by typing "phone", which will answer the pending call, and connect you directly.

       Phone has two modes, much like the vi editor.  These two modes are called conversation and command  modes,  and	are  toggled  through  the
       escape (<esc>) and return (<ret>) keys.

       When in the conversation mode, anything typed on the keyboard is sent to everyone in the current conversation.  This is the default mode.

       The  command  mode  is  used to execute commands, and is entered by pressing the escape key. When in this mode, phone will clear the bottom
       line of the screen and print the prompt "Command>".  At this point anything typed in is added to the command buffer, and will  be  executed
       when the return key is pressed.	To exit command mode without executing the acommand, press the escape key a second time.

       To ivite another user to join the current conversation from within phone, enter command	mode by pressing the escape key, then type

	    call user@host

       followed  by the <return> key.  The user will receive a message like the one shown above if he is logged in.  The host part of the name may
       be omitted if the both you and the other person are on the same machine.

       Phone also allows a user to execute shell commands inside his window with any keyboard input being fed to the process.  The program's  out-
       put  is sent to all users in the conversation.  A shell command is executed within phone through the use of the run or ! command.  An exam-
       ple of this is:

	    run adb a.out core

       to run the adb command with the arguments a.out and core.  Note that tilde expansion (ie. ~user) is done by phone, but wildcarding, piping,
       and  i/o  redirection are performed by the user's shell.  It is unlikely that anyone actually cares, of course.	Also, the use of visually-
       oriented programs such as vi and rogue is not recommended, as this usually results in strange and unpredictable things happening.  If  your
       terminal goes up in a puff of smoke, you were warned.

       To find about the other commands available with phone, type help or ? in command mode.

       You  can  allow	or  disallow  phone  messages  to  your terminal through the use of the mesg command.  When you first log on, messages are
       enabled.

BUGS

       Csh is unhappy being fed through pipes, but it's a dumb program anyway.
       The manual page is horrendous at best.
       Please send any problems, questions, or suggestions to the author.

AUTHOR

       Jonathan C. Broome (broome@ucb-vax.berkeley.edu)
       The original user interface is borrowed from a previous program (also called phone) posted to the network in late 1984, author unknown.

FILES

       /etc/hosts	to find the recipient's machine
       /etc/utmp	to find the recipient's tty
       /etc/passwd	to find each user's real name

SEE ALSO

       mail(1), mesg(1), talk(1), who(1), write(1)

4.2 Berkeley Distribution														  PHONE(1)