One of the simplest hacks you can do with znol is to have your znol list of who is logged on be sent to you as a zephyrgram instead of being in the xterm where you typed the command. This is done with UNIX redirection, sending the output of the znol program to zwrite as the message. To do this, you would type
znol | zwrite yourusername
Another popular program which many people use to replace both znol and zwrite is called xzewd. This program is not supported by SIPB. It was written by a user, Eddie Kohler, <eddietwo>. It is an X application that gives you lots of windows with silly graphics for your znol list and for sending zephyrgrams. In order to use xzewd, you need to type
add outland; xzewd &
If you have problems with xzewd, you should bring them to eddietwo@mit.edu. There are a few important things to note about xzewd. While it is easy to use, it makes dotfiles and changes some of your dotfiles for you. It also uses up computational resources constantly because of the graphics.
Other programs that some people use include xzul and xzwrite. xzwrite can be found in the standard athena release. To read more about it, type
man xzwrite
xzul is written by a SIPB member, Yonah Schmeidler. It is an update of xznol. For more information about it, type
add outland; man xzul
All of these programs are graphical applications that do similar things to znol and zwrite.
Geoffrey G Thomas 2009-02-09