This weekend

Happy Friendship Day

Had a long weekend. 3 days. Fri-Sat-Sun. It was full of coding. Especially for the chat server I am making. Wrote 5 servers in total. Searched on net for any legacy code. Got few codes to play with. It's working now. Multiple users can connect to the chat server. The most important part of socket programming was socket_select and socket_read. I tried both blocking and non-blocking connection. Non-blocking is not recommended as it eats of lots of CPU time. It still however has problems - when transfer is idle for some time say 2-3 minutes. Response after idle time for 2-3 minutes is unpredictable. Server doesn't broadcast the message. Neither it appears to be echoing properly. I am suspecting it's some kind of issue of timeout with client telnet. No fully sure though. May be there is some catch somewhere in the code. Have to look into that.

Secondly, keeping timeout problem apart, I am thoroughly enjoying chatting from telnet. This is the very basic chat and is the fundamental concept being IRC. That's how so many chat protocol have evolved. It worked in windows telnet program, putty, kermit, absolute telnet, wise telnet. I downloaded many telnet programs to make sure that when we press enter it sends LF-CR to the server. This is required by TCP/IP protocol. Hopefully it does. Kermit has option to select CR or LF or LF-CR. I liked kermit.

Thirdly, I also spent a lot time on font for my UNIX. I am looking for Courier New, Font size 12 and bold font applied across Xterm, GVIM and Emacs. Courier New font is available in windows. But, unfortunately it's not available in Linux/Solaris. :(( There are ways to install fonts but that needs superuser account. Wonder why Courier New font is not added in Linux. MS has copyright on it? Meanwhile, I am unhappily managing with Courier-12-bold. Looks good but not as good as if it were Courier New. In case you know how to use courier new font in Linux please care to share.