COFFEE(1)

NAME
coffee [ new | half | ugh | empty ] | x | [ xview-options ]

DESCRIPTION
Coffee is a network-based coffee pot monitor, analogous to faces, vismon, et. al. It displays the general state of the coffee pot, such as full, half-full, old-and-bitter coffee, or completely empty. The present version is manually operated with timeouts.

The program can be invoked in a command-line environment with one of the arguments full, half, ugh empty or status. These respectively set the status to full, half, old-and-undrinkable, or empty, and display the status.

If invoked with any other argument, the program creates an X Window System icon displaying one of the four modes shown above; in this case, all arguments are passed to the X library (currently XView) so you can specify -display xxx:0, -WP x y, etc. (it is safe to say "coffee X" or similar if you want the display on localhost:0). Opening the icon gives you a set of buttons that let you select the appropriate mode; the window auto-iconifies after you select a mode.

If invoked with no argument, it prints a status message.

FILES
The path to STATFILE is hardcoded in the coffee.h file. It normally refers to an NFS-mounted file in a pub-writable directory.

HISTORY
First (XView) version written by Ian Darwin, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, August, 1992.

BUGS

A broadcast RPC mechanism would have been better than a status file.

There is no way to indicate ``coffee is made but we're out of milk.''

There should be an odor sensor which would indicate when the coffee has turned bitter. Or a weight sensor, and a guage display, to indicate exact fullness. These will be incorporated in a future release, shortly after the Brooklyn Bridge changes hands.

There ought to be a TimBits option. - rph

You tend to drink more coffee when you can see whenever a fresh pot is available. Such is the price of omniscience.

Drinking coffee during pregnancy will make the baby jittery.

Brewed coffee always smells better than it tastes.