[MUD-Dev] Re: Finer points of Telnet programming ...

[Greg Munt]

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Greear <greear at cyberhighway.net>
To: mud-dev at kanga.nu <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Date: Sunday, August 23, 1998 10:31 PM
Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: Finer points of Telnet programming ...

>It doesn't have to be any more complex than reading bytes
>from a socket, and writing others back to the socket.  It
>has little to do with telnet itself.  I would suggest downloading
>some mud code, circle, diku,  or whatever and start looking
>at the select, bind, socket, gethostbyname, and related system
>calls.


I heartily disagree that maintaining connections with telnet clients 'has
little to do with telnet itself'. Just because most (an assumed 'most',
admittedly) stock muds support no more than TELOPT_ECHO, this doesn't mean
that is what *should* be done. If you are going to write from scratch, you
may as well do it right! (What happens when an old client, which doesnt
support line mode, tries to connect?)

Also, one thing that has always confused me about ScryMUD: why reimplement
DIKU from scratch? I can think of no good reason for it.

On the subject of socket programming, I found the entries in the Linux
'info' documentation an excellent source, with many examples.