which program in Linux?

[Janina Sajka]

You didn't catch my meaning, so you missed the distinction I was trying
to make.

When I say "this task can be accomplished," I don't mean what you mean.
I mean simply the task of chatting via text on line. The traditional,
open, standards based way to achieve that is to use something called
"Internet Relay Chat (IRC). IRC is not a software, it's a protocol, and
it's an open protocol (described in RFC 1459). It facilitates the task
of allowing many people in disparate geographic locations to type at
each other in real time. 

As I understand you, you are looking for something similar but more
narrowly defined. You're looking for something that allows this same
kind of realtime functionality, but employs a protocol that is not open,
but rather proprietary. I was pointing out how unfortunate such choices
are. Someone made the choice for this proprietary, exclusive,
protocol--probably unwittingly, probably without considering who they
were leaving out by their choices. Maybe they don't care. I don't know.

Think of it by analogy. You want to order dinner. Excellent, dinner is
something we all need. But, if you only speak Zulu, you're going to have
a bit of a challenge ordering dinner in Bismark, North Dakota where
there are probably very few people who speak Zulu. The task is ordering
dinner, but the definition needs to comprehend the language barrier--the
protocol that must be supported.

Then again, you say you want to go to all locations and not be
inhibited. You want to text chat with anyone and everyone. Well you
should want this. But, you don't really mean that when you ask for
something that talks a particular, proprietary, protocol for achieving
that functionality. That is restricted communication--restricted only to
other Zulu speakers, to stick with my analogy.


Karen Lewellen writes:
> Janina, You suggest that this task can be accomplished in Linux, when
> in truth, save for in very limited ways, and likely in no way where my
> specific request was concerned, it cannot.  On the Other hand the
> second post states clearly that such cannot be done within the context
> of the question and situation i asked.  This is at least to me a major
> difference in painting.  Karen