[MUD-Dev] Clients

[Shawn Halpenny]

On Sun, 11 Jan 1998, Matt Chatterley wrote:

My two cents:

> I think the most popular client features which people have described to me
> are an easy to view command line for entering commands (with no limit on
> length of lines), and a command history as well as a 'scroll back' of
> sorts (aka tf's /recall).

I would consider a toggleable vi-mode for the command line practically
a necessity.  Actually, a number of useful features from shells would be
nice:

- '!' syntax for recalling old commands
- an intelligent history list (as more commands are added, the user-visible
  offset of previous commands does not change)
- etc.

> The ability to make log files of events, connect to multiple worlds
> simultaneously and macros are also popular.

Session log files are always nice.  In plain text, too.  If the mud is
sending me ANSI color, I don't want to deal with stuff like 
  ^[[1;32mBoy does ^[[2;31;42mthis^[[1;32m^[[40m suck to read.^[[m
in my session logs.  Macros are a must.  And it's awfully nice not to be
restricted in what one can write a macro for.  Specifically, something that
allows me a certain regular-expression matching ability.  Tintin-esque
example assuming Perl regexps:
	# make "'<language> <text>" map to "say in <language> <text>"
	#alias {^'\s*(.*?)\s+(.*)} {say in $1 $2}
 
And triggers are handy...regexps are a must there too.

> I'm interesting in hearing not only which software you folks use, but also
> *why you use it* - what does the software have that you like? What is
> missing? Personally I use tf since it is straightforward to use and has a
> nice, uncluttered display (something I will strive to recreate!).

I wrote my own client in Perl since I lusted after what I could do if I had
real regular-expression matching at my disposal.  And another plus was that
I could evaluate Perl while I was playing, should I need any extra
functionality.

[ ... ]

> Also a simple information communication system so that screens such as
> 'score' and 'stats' which are popular names for similar things on many
> games can be permanently displayed or toggled (dynamically updated via
> communication from the server to the client), perhaps on an 'information
> window' which works as a 'pinboard' allowing iconisation of each window
> and such.

I would like to be able to control the positions and sizes (within reason)
of all user interface elements.  The information the MUD may be sending is
fine, but I'd like more control over where I have to look to get it.

--
Shawn Halpenny