Historic prototype protocol of PSYC.

Help File

.cm Copyright (C) 1989 Carlo 'Lynx' von Loesch

CONFERENCE mode (The SHELL Cafe):

You can access the SHELL conference by typing "-" before each line you want to send to the other members or entering the conference mode by typing "-" and <ENTER>. The SHELL conference is coordinated by the SHELL program itself, except for the private and secret channels which are coordinated by the server. It should not be accessed from other software and it is handled directly from user to user, it was not conceived as a conference system for local use only, for this purpose it is indeed lots faster then any common (server-based) conference system. The SHELL automatically connects you to the other members, so don't get scared when you get an invitation or a private message. You must know that some data is read from your NAMES-file and sent to *all* members, local or remote! The data are: your nickname & real name, your userid (& node) are also communicated to the others. If you want your nickname to be in lower case all you have to do is XEDIT your NAMES-file and change it to lower case, since the system NAMES command is a little dumb...

These are the conference commands at your disposition:

-
   If you already changed to cafe mode, then the program will give you a
   list of tables (channels) and the people at them.
 
-Change <table>
   Move to another table (channel).
   0 is none, 1 to 999 is public, >999 is private, negative is secret.
 
-Invite <nickname>
   Invite someone to your table.
 
-Msg <nickname> <text>
   Send a private message.
 
-Name ( <nickname> )
   If <nickname> is a known conference member, then information about his
   real name and userid is printed, instead, if <nickname> is unknown,
   then a new nickname is defined for yourself, and comunicated to the
   others. If no <nickname> is given, then a list of conference members
   is printed at the screen.
 
-Scream <text>
   This appears on the screens of all *local* conference members
   (except for those on secret channels).
 
-Whois <nick | userid>
   Find identification of a person.
 
-<text>
   If the first word of <text> is no abbreviation of a command, then the
   <text> is interpreted as a text to send, this is meant to be used to
   send one line into the conference while being in an other mode.

In an earlier version VM/Shell also supported alphanumeric channels, but later IRC compatibility was necessary, so channel names were reduced to numbers.

Yes, the VM/Shell operated in a peer-to-peer (P2P) fashion, by sending an invisible SMSG to all known people - easy discovery back then on VM/CMS.

More documentation of VM/Shell resides in http://my.pages.de/pub/comp/vm/VMshell+VMcafe+IRCgate/doc and the source code including the 1989 IRC Gateway is here: http://my.pages.de/pub/comp/vm/VMshell+VMcafe+IRCgate

The client source shows the implementation of the P2P protocol (at the end, see SPECIAL label) whereas the server only served the purpose of matching up people in secret channels, and doing the IRC gateway.

This chat system shared the name with a soon later protocol proposal called Cafe.