xinout-1.1-README
August 1995


Xinout 1.1
----------

Xinout is an X-based, multi-user, electronic version of the office in/out
board. Users can be pegged as either "In" or "Out" and a comment can be
placed next to their name. Comments can be selected from a pre-determined
list, a personal list, or entered as free form text.

Users can post a group message (e.g. "Staff meeting @ 3") which will
appear at the bottom of all the xinout windows.

The program can also be configured to display details about each of the
people on the board such as phone number, beeper number, e-mail address,
etc.


Setting it up
-------------

There are three main parts to the application. First, the daemon process,
xinoutd, must be running on 1 machine accessible by all the users of the
application. Second, the client program, xinout, can run on any number of
other hosts (typically 1 per in/out board member) and will connect
over a TCP/IP socket to the daemon process. The client program determines
the location of the daemon process by querying two environments variables:
XINOUTHOST (defaults to "localhost") and XINOUTPORT (defaults to 7232).

The final piece required for the application is the configuration file.
The config file determines the names of the people who will be on the
board, the default set of comments and a variety of other information.
Ideally, this file will be placed in a directory mounted by all the users
of the application, but if necessary multiple copies of the file can
be distributed; these files must remain identical for the program to
operate correctly, however. The default config file is "/usr/local/xinout.cfg".
This can be overriden through the -config command line option, though. The
sample config file has ample comments to guide you in how to set it up.

The xinout program supports a "command line only" option which allows you
to change the in/out status of a user without bringing up the xinout window.
e.g., "xinout -name Joe -out" sets the status of Joe to out and exits.


Command line options
--------------------

	xinout		-config		filename	# Specifies the config file to use

				-name		user_name	# User name for "command line only"
										# behavior

				-in, -out				# Set status of user_name

				-comment	text		# Set comment for user_name

				-grpmsg		text		# Set the group message, user_name
										# not required

				-fortune	text		# Set the fortune message, user_name
										# not required

				-debug					# Output some debugging info

				-help					# Print the usage message


	xinoutd		-cmd		command		# Take the output from "command"
										# and send it to the xinouts for
										# display in the group message area.
										# Note: group messages are never
										# overriden by this feature.

				-delay		minutes		# Repeat "command" every x minutes,
										# default is 15

				-fortune				# Same as
										# -cmd "/usr/games/fortune -s"

				-debug					# Output some debugging info



Any comments, bugs, etc. can be sent to me at 72010.1771@compuserve.com.

Copyright (c) Shaun Terry, 1995. Freeware.