[MUD-Dev] Clients

[coder at ibm.net]

On 14/01/98 at 03:50 AM, Caliban Tiresias Darklock <caliban at darklock.com>
said: >Sometime at or around 03:52 PM 1/13/98 +0000, I personally
witnessed Matt >Chatterley jumping up to shout:
>>On Tue, 13 Jan 1998, Shawn Halpenny wrote:

>But here's my two cents. I think one of the biggest mistakes people make
>in saying 'this is what I want in a client' is to say they want this
>specific feature like this specific program, instead of saying what they
>want in terms of ability. Nobody wants a 'macro feature like EMACS' --
>they want the ability to define and execute their own commands. In a
>character-mode environment like UNIX or DOS, then yes, that probably
>means a macro feature, and may mean something very like EMACS. But in
>modern windowing environments like the Mac or Windows or X, that macro
>facility would likely bear *no* resemblance to EMACS, probably taking the
>form of a user-defined button bar with a 'command wizard' behind it. I
>think we get too bogged down in what we know and what we're used to,
>rather than letting the programmer take our needs and build them into a
>useful product... it's pretty common in my day job to go in to build a
>program for a customer, then see them point to some program and say
>"...and that's what we want it to do". If that's what you want it to do,
>then what are *we* here for? Go buy that. Obviously, that's NOT what you
>want it to do, so what is it missing? 

A good and well worded point.  Define by need, not feature.  Its a base
rule of design, and is a common problem I face as a contractor with client
requirements.

To take the case of macro support I'd refine the requirements into:

  Users need the ability to create user-defined command and action
sequences which can then be invoked by name or GUI selection.  Said
sequences need to be able to adapt to the current environment of the
player's character, accept arguments or other run-time tailorings, prompt
and interact with the invoker, and intelligently handle variant responses
during their execution.

Ergo, you (minimally) need a light weight programming language which can
be bound to tokens or a GUI selection.  Its also worth noting that the
above req also largely defines the requirements for triggers.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...