Hey

The hey program is one of RedBrick's most popular services. It lets you send instant messages to other users over the Redbrick network. 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 a hey

Sending a hey is very simple. From the command prompt, type "hey" followed by the username you want to send the message to and hit return, like so:

undone@murphy (~) -> hey phaxx

This will start hey and let you write a message to "phaxx" or whoever you'd like to talk to. You can then start typing your message on the next line:

undone@murphy (~) -> hey phaxx
I think it's about time we updated the tutorial on how to send and receive heys, don't you?

When you're done typing your message, hit return to move onto a new line. Then hold ctrl and press d to send the message. You should get a confirmation message telling you that the hey was sent successfully (the default confirmation message is "groovy") and then you'll be returned to the prompt. Then when phaxx checks his prompt, he'll see the message like this:

Message from undone@murphy on pts/489 at [ Fri 15/Dec/2006 18:43:20 GMT ] ...
     -===================================================================-
     | I think it's about time we update the tutorial on how to send and |
     | receive heys, don't you?                                          |
     -===================================================================-
EOF

The "EOF" stands for "End of file", meaning that it's the end of the message.

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