Hey

Using Hey

[ Author : Declan McMullen (skyhawk) : 2003]

The hey program is RedBricks answer to instant messenger software. It was developed and is maintained by RedBrick members and has since spread to various other servers including other college netsocs.

Below is a tutorial on how to get used to sending and recieving heys on RedBrick Sending

Sending a simple hey is very straight forward simply type:

hey username and hit the return key

Then you type in the message you wish to send and press return again. To send the message hold down ctrl and hit the d key.

However there are various other options that hey can take to personalise the messages you send:

   -w (wrap)        Specifies what column to wrap words at.
   -t (title)       Specifies the title string for the message.
   -b (borderstr)   Specifies the message's border.
   -s (successmsg)  Specifies message to print on success.
   -e (eofstring)   Specifies an alternative EOF string.
   -p (prompt)      Specifies the prompt string.
   -n (maxnames)    Specifies the maximum number of names prompted.
   -m               Ignore potentially annoying mesg n warnings.
   -c               Shows the credits.
   -h               Shows this listing.

Here is an example of a hey syntax using some of these parameters.

hey -t "DCUNS HELPDESK" -b "o--||++++" -p "Helping %u -- " skyhawk Helping skyhawk -- How Can I help you? Helping skyhawk -- skyhawk is logged on more than one place. Using (pts/50). hey: skyhawk - groovy

Most of these extra options are very self explanatory and are elaborated upon by typing man hey into your terminal

The -b switch deserves special explanation. This value sets the border around your hey. The easiest way to think of it is like this:

hey -b "123456789" username

  1 = default
  2 = top
  3 = bottom
  4 = right
  5 = left
  6 = top left
  7 = top right
  8 = bottom left
  9 = bottom right

You can try out various options until you find a border that you like by heying yourself. Receiving

When a hey is received it will appear on your terminal. Here is what the recieved version of the hey I sent above looks like

Message from skyhawk on prodigy (pts/161) [ Mon 24/Feb/2003 22:15:18 ] ...

                           +-- DCUNS HELPDESK ---+
                           | How Can I help you? |
                           +---------------------+

You will see the name of the user who sent you the hey at the top of the message and you can respond to them by following the sending instructions above

Sometimes you may be typing away on that important piece of project code or html and a hey will arrive and make your screen unreadable. If this happen to you typing ctrl followd by l will clear the hey off your screen.

To avoid this irritation if you are working on something important its a good idea to turn messages off. This means that other users can no longer send you messages. To do this simply type mesg n, to turn message back on type mesg y.

Most people keeping a mesg y terminal for heying and a mesg n terminal to sending email,reading the newsgroups etc Shell Settings

You may be saying to yourself I dont want to type all those options every time i want to send a hey. Never fear there is an easy solution.

You can create shell aliases, similiar to shortcuts in windows that allow you to type a single short command which you can set to run a longer command e.g a full hey syntax

alias hawk='hey -t "DCUNS HELPDESK" -b "o--||++++" -p "Helping %u >> " skyhawk'

The above line would then allow you to simply type hawk and it will send a hey with the defined hey settings.

To add an alias you must edit your .zshrc file. to do this type nano ~/.zshrc. Then add the alias you want and hit ctrl and x to save and y to accept the changes.

Now to activate the change type source ~/.zshrc

The above works fine for shortcuts to specific users, but lets say you want to change the look of the hey you send when you simply type hey username. This can also be done with some shell variables

Add the following to yout .zshrc file in the same manner as above, editing them to suit your needs

export HEY_TITLE="HELPDESK" export HEY_BORDERS="o--||++++" export HEY_WRAP=90 export HEY_SUCCESS="groovy" export HEY_PROMPT="%u >> "

Once again type source ~/.zshrc to activate the changes

The main method of getting used to heying is to do a lot of it until you get used to it or send a hey to a member of the helpdesk team. Happy Heying