Sending "pop up" messages to peer machines

[Don Russell]

Karl Larsen wrote:
> Don Russell wrote:
>> I have an FC7 box running some basic things like e-mail etc.
>>
>> The LAN is basicaly made up of that machine and a handful of Windows 
>> (2000 and XP) machines.
>> I am also anticipating adding an Apple Mac machine to the mix, as 
>> well as a Linux laptop.
>>
>> I want an application on the FC7 box to send a "pop up" message to 
>> all the other machines on the network.
>>
>> In researching "net send <bios-name> <text>" I discovered a program 
>> like WinPopup is needed on the windows machines... further 
>> investigation into that looks like it's old information, pertaining 
>> to Windows 3.1, 95 and 98, explicitly NOT supported in Windows NT... 
>> and I'm assuming Windows 2000/XP.
>>
>> The question is... how do I make my FC7 box "aware" of all the other 
>> machines on the peer network so it knows who to send messages to?
>>
>> Is there some sort of broadcast I can send out like a "OK, sound 
>> off...." and all recipients of that broadcast respond with a "OK, my 
>> name is ..." (or just having the IP address would probably suffice)
>>
>> Then I can send the message to each device that replied...
>>
>> Anybody have any pointers/suggestions?
>>
>> Thank you
>>
>>
>>
>>
>    I assume your planning a LAN which ties all the computers together. 
> Do this right and you will be able to send all computers mail saying 
> Please stop ect.

Yes, the computers are all connected via the LAN, though they do not 
share any disk space etc. Each of the Windows machines use an IMAP 
e-mail client to talk to the FC7 box. Each machine can FTP to the FC7 
box, and ssh....

In this case, I don't want to send mail because it may not be seen in a 
timely fashion. (i.e. it may be DELIVERED quickly, but not seen for 
several minutes etc, depending on how often the e-mail client checks... 
and then how often the human checks. :-)

The other reason for not using e-mail, is the message content is useful 
for only a short period of time. I'd really like a window to pop up and 
the user has to click something to dismiss it... or it could time out 
after n seconds....

Of course, the pop-up should not take the focus away from the current 
application running.... I hate that... I'm typing along in something, 
and all of a sudden some other app decides to popup a window and set 
focus there so my typing continues in the wrong window.... :-(

I'm thinking I may have to write my own little specialized client/server 
thingy for this.... not the end of the world, but it seems so basic I 
thought I'd check "what's out there"... :-)