What: X-Windows BSD compatible talk client, written in Python. Author: Adam P. Jenkins Requirements: Python 1.4, Tkinter package, X-Windows. I suppose you could use it in Windows if Tkinter is ported to it, but xtalk also uses Unix socket calls, and I don't know if those are portable. License: GPL Installation: Xtalk comes as three python files. You can try xtalk out by just typing python Talk.py To install it, edit the Makefile to change the install prefix, and type make install This compiles the python files, copies them to /usr/local/lib/xtalk/, an puts the xtalk script in /usr/local/bin, where "/usr/local" is whatever you set INSTALL_PREFIX to in the Makefile. If your backspace doesn't work correctly in XTalk, you can try adding the following line to your .Xdefaults file XTalk.swapBsDel: true which will swap the bindings for the backspace and delete keys. Usage: Either run as "xtalk" or "xtalk user[@address [tty]]". The GUI is quite self-explanatory I think, but I'll explain it just in case. When started, xtalk won't actually try to connect until you click on the "Connect" button in the program. xtalk accepts addresses in the same format as the regular BSD talk program. From in the program you can enter the address in the "Address" entry. At any point during a talk session, clicking on "Disconnect" disconnects the session. The format of a talk address is as follows. To talk to a user on the same host, just use "username" as the address. To talk to a user on another host, use "username@hostname" as the address. If the user is logged in several times, you can specify which tty to "page" them on by saying "username tty" or "username@hostname tty".