svn commit: r263264 - head/usr.bin/talk

Gleb Smirnoff glebius at FreeBSD.org
Mon Mar 17 12:08:08 UTC 2014


On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 11:58:49AM +0000, Gleb Smirnoff wrote:
T> Author: glebius
T> Date: Mon Mar 17 11:58:48 2014
T> New Revision: 263264
T> URL: http://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/base/263264
T> 
T> Log:
T>   Make talk(1) capable of displaying UTF-8 characters.

NB: the network talk protocol is a protocol originating from 4.3BSD, 
that never underwent any standardization. It consists of the talkd(8) 
daemon, that runs via inetd(8) and initiates a talk session between 
remote users, and the talk(1) utility that displays the actual chatting 
session.

The session initialization is defined as protocol in

/usr/include/protocols/talkd.h

The protocol even has version field, so can be carefully extended.

However, nothing is said about contents of the stream session
established. Apparently, original authors didn't care about locale
awareness of the utility.

I decided not to touch the protocol version. Here are my reasons:

1) The signalling protocol didn't change. Only stream session, which
   isn't defined.

2) I doubt anyone in modern world runs talk(1) over a network wider
   than 127.0.0.0/8. Moreover, only extremely old fashioned geeks run
   it at all.

3) The interoperability isn't broken at all, it is only extended. If
   both sides of session run same locale, they communicate correctly.
   Plain ASCII or KOI8-R work as they did before.

-- 
Totus tuus, Glebius.


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