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This file explains how to use an existing Zephyr service once you've
built and installed the Zephyr distribution. To learn how to build
and install Zephyr, read the file INSTALL. To learn how to set up
Zephyr service at a site, read the file OPERATING.
First, before you can do anything else, your client machine must be
running zhm from the local system binary directory (/etc/athena/zephyr
if you built Zephyr with --enable-athena, /usr/local/sbin/zephyr if
you installed Zephyr in /usr/local and didn't use --enable-athena).
Only one copy of zhm can be running on a given machine, and it can be
started by any user. If you're using a machine you don't administer,
you may want to check if the machine is configured to start up zhm
automatically at boot time.
Once you have zhm running, you can start receiving zephyrgrams by
running the command:
zwgc
"zwgc" stands for "Zephyr WindowGram Client". If you built Zephyr
with X support and are using an X display, you will receive messages
as windows on your screen (click on them to get rid of them);
otherwise, you will receive messages in your terminal as text. Read
the man page on zwgc to find out how to configure it using the
.zwgc.desc file in your home directory.
You can send messages to another user with:
zwrite username
To write to groups of users, you must agree on a "class" and/or
"instance" to write to (this will be explained in greater detail
below). At MIT, most users communicate in private groups via classes.
Suppose a bunch of people wanted to communicate on a class "newclass".
They would all subscribe to the class with the command:
zctl add newclass \* \*
and send messages with:
zwrite -c newclass
The "zctl add" command adds the subscription to the .zephyr.subs file
in your home directory, so that you will automatically be subscribed
to the class the next time you run zwgc. If you just want to
subscribe without adding the subscription to your .zephyr.subs file,
use "zctl sub" instead of "zctl add".
Now for a bit more explanation about what classes and instances are:
every Zephyr message is send to a class, an instance, and a recipient,
commonly written as <class,instance,recipient>. The default class is
"MESSAGE"; the default instance is "PERSONAL". When you use "zwrite
username", you are sending a message to <MESSAGE,PERSONAL,username>.
If you don't specify a username on the zwrite command line, you will
be sending to the recipient "*", so when you use "zwrite -c newclass",
you are sending a message to <newclass,PERSONAL,*>.
Similarly, every time you request a subscription, you are subscribing
to a class, an instance, and a recipient. The recipient must be
either "*" or your username. The instance can be any string; however,
if you subscribe to instance "*", you will receive messages to any
instance as long as the class and recipient also match. The class can
be any string; "*" has no special meaning for class names. When you
start zwgc, you are automatically subscribed to
<MESSAGE,PERSONAL,yourusername> and <MESSAGE,URGENT,yourusername> even
if you don't explicitly request those subscriptions.
As an example of how you might use these features, at MIT we have
several frequently-used instances of class MESSAGE, called
"white-magic", "help", "weather", "tmbg" and so forth. These are
commonly known as "public" instances because they are not intended to
exclude anyone. Users can subscribe to individual instances using
"zctl add message help \*", or they can subscribe to all of them at
once using "zctl add message \* \*". (If users do this, they can tell
zwgc to filter out messages from certain instances; see the man page
for zwgc.) If users want to have semi-private group conversations,
they use separate classes, as described earlier.
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