[MUD-Dev] Clients

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

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:
>>=20
>> I would consider a toggleable vi-mode for the command line
practically
>> a necessity.=A0 Actually, a number of useful features from shells
would be
>> nice:
>
>Hmm. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 'vi' mode (one which
responds
>instantly to keypresses in a char-by-char mode rather than typical
line
>based approach?).

I think what he's saying is he wants command mode and input mode --
sort of like in vi, you're either inputting to the file (the MUD in
this case) or controlling the editor (the client). I don't know that
I'd completely agree with this idea, as it seems sort of backward;
after all, you could probably do just as well with a separate command
line altogether for the client. There's also the possibility that he
wants the command line to have the same *syntax* as vi. If that's what
he's asking for, then I have to kind of wonder what good the majority
of vi's commands would be in a MUD client.

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?=20

I think if we all just went 'I want to have this ability', it would go
a lot better than 'I want the client to do this, this, and this'. If
you want the client to have a dual-mode command line, the question to
be asked is *why* you want that. I think it's pretty clear that you
want to be able to control the client itself from the same interface
where you're controlling the MUD. You don't want to switch windows or
futz with a mouse or anything, you want to enter your commands right
there on the command line where you type the MUD commands, and you
don't want the client intercepting your MUD commands or your client
commands getting sent to the MUD. There are a lot of ways to handle
that, and a dual mode command line is only one of them. My immediate
thought is to use the / key, as in you type '/client-command' to
execute one client command in a series of MUD commands, or just '/' to
enter a sort of client command shell -- everything is a client command
until this shell is exited or turned off. This could be done by
several
methods; '//' is sensible, as is another '/', a '\', '/exit' or just
'exit', or 'quit', 'end', a period on a line all by itself, a
control-D, etc. I selected the '/' because that's what TinyFugue uses,
and that's what most of the really serious MUD players I run into are
using, but it's quite simple to make this a configurable parameter.
The
mechanics themselves are irrelevant, provided when you hand it to
someone for testing they find that it's easy to work with and doesn't
take a year to adjust to. But I think Shawn's saying he wants a robust
command set in the client more than anything.

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