An OVERVIEW of Zephyr
There are several hundred workstations scattered about the MIT campus and if
you've ever wondered how you would find someone or send a quick message to
someone or a group of people without waiting for them to read mail while they
are logged in, Zephyr is the answer.
Zephyr provides a means for centralizing users' locations while they are
logged in and allows fast message service (on the order of a few seconds) to
one user or many users simultaneously.
When you log in, a program called zwgc (zephyr windowgram client) is run.
This program registers you with the Zephyr server(s) and remains in the
background to handle incoming messages. These messages appear in the upper
left of your screen in the form of windows (hence windowgram). Clicking on the
window will cause it to disappear. Here are some simple examples:
> zlocate joeuser
m4-082-5.MIT.EDU :0.0 Wed Apr 29 05:47:32 1992
This says that joeuser has been logged in to m4-082-5 since the
indicated time. The :0.0 indicates the display he is using (see man X).
athena% zwrite joeuser
Type your message now. End with control-D or a dot on a line by itself.
Hi there.
.
joeuser: Message sent
A small window with the sender's name and message appeared on his screen.
For more info on Zephyr, see the document Zephyr on Athena, available
at CopyTech (11-004) or via the On-Line Help system by typing the
following at the athena% prompt:
help zephyr
There are also man pages related to zephyr:
man zephyr
man zwrite
man zlocate
man znol
man zleave
man zaway
For more advanced features of Zephyr see:
man zwgc
man zctl
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