This is a simple chat facility written by Bill St. Clair in Macintosh Common Lisp. The web server is CL-HTTP.

To enter a new message, type your email address:

Type your message:

Then click the "Submit" button:

The default "Text" mode turns newlines into line breaks (<br>) and double newlines into paragraph breaks (<p>). "HTML" mode passes your text through unmodified:

If you click the "Submit" button with a blank message, no message will be sent, and your screen will be updated with any messages that have arrived since your last update. The advantage of this over just reloading the page is that your "Email" address and "Text/HTML" mode will be preserved (I haven't yet written the magic cookie code to preserve these across sessions).

Your messages appear on the server's screen as they are submitted. Currently, the messages are stored only in memory. All is lost when the server goes down. If people want it, I can easily make it persistent, and fairly easily add multiple discussion areas. The whole thing so far took only 3 or 4 hours, including lots of learning about CL-HTTP.


CL-HTTP Chat - Copyright 1996, Bill St. Clair