PHONE(1)

💖 NAME 💖

phone — the Phone utility for DECnet, bestie. yes it's literally called phone. slay.

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

phone [options]
Options:
[-vVh] [-s switchhook char] [initial command]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so phone is a program that lets you communicate interactively with users on VMS systems. like, actually talk to them. no cap. 💅

Two user interfaces are available: X-Windows (GTK+) and terminal (ncurses). If X-Windows is available and compiled into phone then it will be used — unless the -n flag is present on the command line. the way it just picks for you. rude but fine.

After entering the phone command you will be presented with the phone screen, which has windows for the chat and a command-line at the top. 🌸 If you are not talking to another user then you can enter commands directly, otherwise you will need to precede commands with the switch hook character, which defaults to the percent sign (%).

You can also enter a command for phone on the shell command-line. This command will be executed when phone starts up. This makes it convenient to enter commands such as:

'phone answer' or 'phone marsha::chrissie'

like, iconic. main character energy fr fr. ✨

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🌈 Commands, in command mode 🌈

In command mode phone understands several commands:

• DIAL <node::user> — Call a user 📞
• ANSWER — Answer an incoming call 🫶
• REJECT — Reject an incoming call 💀
• EXIT or QUIT — Return the the command prompt
• HOLD — Hold all callers ✋
• UNHOLD — Unhold callers
• HANGUP — Hangup the phone
• DIR <node> — Show users logged into <node>
• FACSIMILE <file> — Send <file> 📠
• HELP — Show this help

All commands (apart from QUIT and EXIT) can be abbreviated to 3 characters and all (really all this time) commands are case insensitive. yes, ALL of them. we said what we said. periodt. 👑

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -h, -? — Displays help for using the command. 🆘
• -V — Show the version of phone. 💜
• -s — Set the switch hook character. This is the character used to switch from talking to another user and entering PHONE commands when using the terminal interface.
• -n — Disables use of the X-windows user interface. Use this to run phone in an xterm. 🖥️

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🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

• phoned(8)

go read it, iykyk 🌟

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and that's the whole vibe check, bestie 💖 this page came from the DECnet utilities manual, dated March 26 1999 — yeah she's vintage, she's a classic, and she ate. mwah. 💅🎀🦋