winpopup in linux

[Ben Scott]

On 2/2/07, Paul Lussier <p.lussier at comcast.net> wrote:
> Winpopup is an API intended for use by applications and the OS to tell
> the (single) user of the system something.

  The NetBIOS and SMB protocols actually allow multiple users per
system.  Microsoft's implementation of this has traditionally been...
poor.  ;-)

  You do have me wondering how this stuff would interact with a
multi-user Windows box (they do exist (shocking, I know)).

> It has been subverted from
> it's intended use for the nefarious means of annyoing the living crap
> out of friends, coworkers, spouses, and kids, thanks to smbclient :)

  I use it at work (which is mostly 'doze) to warn everyone if Bad
Things Are About To Happen To The Network.  For example, power failure
in the server room.  It's pretty useful for that.  There was rwall on
'nix, but that's pretty much been abandoned for the same reasons the
"Messenger" service is disabled by default now.  It's too useful a
spam target.

> As already mentioned by tpb, the way to get a message to all users of
> a Linux/Unix system is to use 'wall'.  This does not, however, provide
> a pop-up window.

  One thing I've noticed is that the nice support that 'nix had for
collaboration and user inter-communication (talk, write, wall, msg,
finger, etc.) seems to have been lost in the world of X11 (let alone
things like GNOME and KDE).  The best you usually see is "they still
work in xterm", which isn't very good (especially if, like me, you
usually have many xterm's open).  I'm a little surprised there isn't
some mechanism to accept these sorts of things and GUI-ify them for X
users.  It would be nice to keep "wall" from spamming 38 different
xterms.

> ... winpopup ... for a single user on a single system with a
> complicated windowing and message-passing environment ...

  Semi-interesting obscure historical footnote: "NET SEND" actually
used to just blast the message to the DOS terminal screen, a la
write/wall.  WinPopUp was written to handle those messages for 'doze
GUI users.  See above about nothing equivalent for write/wall for X.

-- Ben