| Plain old meta refreshes. Usually every 5 or 10 seconds or so. Perhaps
| configurable on a user and/or server basis.
You could make it even more smooth by doing a multipart document (aka server
push): finishing a HTML document but not closing the HTTP connection and
start a new document as soon as someone else drops a line. But that is a
terrible thing to do in mod_perl, because each client will occupy an Apache
process as long as he's connected. Writing a simple http daemon handling the
chatbox on another port wouldn't be that complicated, and there are modules
out there. Take a look at Apprentice, a realy slim httpd written in threaded
perl, I'm sure it's somewhere on freshmeat.
Ime
