[MUD-Dev] Clients

[Matt Chatterley]

On Tue, 13 Jan 1998, Shawn Halpenny wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Jan 1998, Vadim Tkachenko wrote:
> 
> > Two more notes:
> > 
> > - Don't forget to provide the good old way of typing the command.
> >   BTW, speaking about JP Soft, why didn't anyone provide a good
> >   command/context completion in the MUD? I understand, that's a lot
> >   of work, but you just have to do it once...  
> 
> Assuming you mean build the command completion into the server, you
> have to be in character-at-a-time mode for that.  Sure, it's easy
> enough to do, but I wouldn't want all those packets shuttling back
> and forth for each character typed (now multiply that by 1K users).
> And were the MUD in Australia and the player in Sweden...man, he's
> just going to _hate_ you.  

It would be possible to provide hooks for command completion via the
protocol I am planning (many clients use their own comm protocols with
servers; I will be offering a fairly simple, I hope, expansion protocol
for this client, largely because I want to use it myself. The protocol is
under the working name of Spud, and would do things like bolt-on graphics,
restriction of client features and perhaps command completion and other
shell extensions!).

It might be good to have command completion within the command history of
the client, though. Eg if you have typed 'north' 'south' and 'northeast'
recently, and enter 'nor' and hit tab, it will select 'north' and then
'northeast' upon a second push. Yes, I like that. :)

Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	ICQ: 5580107
"We can recode it; we have the technology."