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|
.TH COLLAB-CLIENTS 1
.SH NAME
collab: chat, poll, poller, whiteboard \- collaborative activities
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B collab/clients/chat
[
.I servicedir
]
.I chatroom
.PP
.B collab/clients/poll
[
.B -d
]
[
.I servicedir
]
.I station
.PP
.B collab/clients/poller
[
.B -d
]
[
.I servicedir
]
.I station
.PP
.B collab/clients/whiteboard
[
.I servicedir
]
.I id
.SH DESCRIPTION
These commands are
.IR wm (1)
programs that are clients of the services of
.IR collabsrv (8).
It must therefore be running in the network for any of them
to be usable.
Furthermore,
.IR collabsrv 's
service directory must appear somewhere in the client's name space,
for instance by using
.IR connect (1),
although plain
.I mount
(see
.IR bind (1))
can also be used.
In all cases,
the optional parameter
.I servicedir
names the service directory
(default:
.BR /n/remote/services ).
Finally,
.I collabsrv
must be configured to provide the service.
.PP
.I Chat
is a simple multi-user chat program.
Each user that wishes to chat starts
.I chat
naming the desired
.IR chatroom ,
which is an identifying string agreed amongst the clients.
(It is often convenient to use the path name of a shared file.)
.I Chat
attempts to enter the given
.IR chatroom .
It announces the results of the connection, and if successful,
displays subsequent chat room messages.
Its window provides a scrollable text area that forms a transcript
of the current conversation, and a single line of editable text at the bottom
of the window for sending messages.
Messages sent by others appear in the transcript tagged with the sender's name.
When the user types a new line (return, enter) in the text entry area,
.I chat
sends the text to all the members of the chat room,
and it subsequently appears in the user's own transcript,
tagged with
.B <you>
in place of the user's name.
.I Chat
also notes in the transcript the arrival and departure of other users.
.PP
.I Poll
and
.I poller
together enable simple real-time polls.
One user runs
.IR poller ,
which activates the given polling
.IR station .
The other users can subsequently join using
.IR poll ,
naming the same
.IR station ,
and can come and go as they please as long
as the
.I poller
remains.
The polling station closes when the
.I poller
leaves.
.PP
.I Poller
drives the interaction for a sequence of one or more real-time polls.
It is assumed that the poller is in the same room as those polled, allowing the
questions and answers to be read out each time, as in quiz shows and exit polls.
Alternatively, something like
.I chat
could be used to pose questions to a distant audience.
For each poll, the polling user selects, in
.IR poller 's
window, the number of possible answers (2, 3, or 4) using radio buttons,
and hits the
.B Start
button.
A bar chart shows results as they come in: each bar shows the percentage of those polled
(thus far) that have selected the corresponding alternative.
Once the polling user hits
.BR Stop ,
no further results are accepted, and the bar chart represents the final result.
The
.B \-d
option causes
.I poller
to display a debugging transcript of the messages it receives.
.PP
Each user being polled runs
.IR poll ,
and initially
sees an array of radio buttons with labels
.BR A ,
.BR B ,
.BR C
and
.BR D .
They remain disabled until the
.I poller
hits
.BR Start ,
at which point
.I poll
enables as many radio buttons as allowed by the poller for this round.
If the user selects a button,
.I poll
immediately send the selection to the polling station
(and thus to the
.IR poller ),
and disables all the buttons, although the user's selection remains marked.
All buttons are also disabled when the
.I poller
says to stop,
whether or not a choice has been made.
Buttons are enabled again at the start of the next question.
The
.B \-d
option causes
.I poll
to display a debugging transcript.
.PP
.I Whiteboard
allows several users to draw on the shared canvas with the given
.IR id ,
which is an identifying string agreed amongst the clients.
The whiteboard window
contains a canvas to be drawn on with stylus, or mouse button 1.
Strokes drawn in a given
.I whiteboard
appear in all others with the
same board
.IR id .
There are two controls at the bottom of the window:
the lower left-hand corner has a small pop-up menu of brush shapes,
including one for erasing; and a long coloured button showing the current drawing colour that
pops up a choice of drawing colour from a palette.
Artists can come and go as they please, but
the drawing vanishes for ever when the last artist leaves the whiteboard.
.SH FILES
.TF /n/remote/services
.TP
.B /n/remote
default mount point of collaborative resources
.br
.TP
.B /n/remote/services
.IR collabsrv (8)
collaborative activity services directory
.SH SOURCE
.B /appl/collab/clients/chat.b
.br
.B /appl/collab/clients/poll.b
.br
.B /appl/collab/clients/poller.b
.br
.B /appl/collab/clients/whiteboard.b
.SH SEE ALSO
.IR connect (1),
.IR collabsrv (8)
|
