Paul writes:
> There was a program (it was called 'MABELL') that would use
> two message files to communicate with two users.

And, yes, I still have the source and if anyone wants to play with it
let me know.  It's written in Pascal.  It only supports one conversation
at a time (there's only one pair of message files) but you could easily
enhance it to do more.

I believe there was a very similar program written by someone else at
some (later?) point too.

There's no date in my source, but the modification timestamp is 1986, so
it's at least that old.

Interestingly, someone just got awarded a patent on the concept of an
Instant Messaging program that lets one party know when the person at
the other end was typing a message, and I was thinking that these old
programs that actually let you watch the other person type characters
might constitute "prior art" for some aspects of that patent.

G.

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *