[MUD-Dev] A new MUD-standard

[Kwon Ekstrom]

----- Original Message -----
From: "J C Lawrence" <claw at kanga.nu>

> I usually like going into considerable detail in writing a
> functional definition of the requirement:

*nod* I could go into a great deal of detail concerning what I'd like
to be able to do with the presentation layer, except I know enough
about various web technologies to know that CSS defines almost
everything necessary for most presentations types.  But if I were to
write a separate specification, I would have to write several pages of
things I'd like to have control over.

> Web protocols work well for many things, tho PULL access semantics
> don't suit everything (which is where the new RPC layers start being
> really interesting).

Web protocols have nothing to do with the underlying socket layer, the
standard transport protocol is http, that is what must be changed
fundamentally.  Pueblo was mentioned earlier which uses html to
display what it received over a telnet connection.

> My temptation would be to use an XML based format for the transport
> layer, and then do local interpretation and presentation of the
> results.  This helps make your Mode/View/Controller abstractions
> fairly clean.

*nod* Agreed here, XML is designed for this purpose... I was contemplating
interactive forms, which means you'd need an easy to understand protocol.
Standard output would be easy to define, <output>text</output>
Whereas for forms you'd generate the text something like:

  <form id="###">
    <edit>vnum</edit>
    <type>mob</type>
    <name>dwarf</name>
  </form>

> There are som many variables inside there that its impossible to
> speak well in generalities.  If you're going to design a protocol,

*nod* I agree that there's too much to consider to be general in this
area, but I can't think of a very good way to use XML for a graphical
interface.  That type of interface would benefit more from a binary
transfer without extrenious characters.

Since you mentioned that you don't have much experience with NWLayout,
it's what netscape 6 uses to render web pages, it's supposidely CSS 1,
HTML 4, XML 1, DOM 1 compliant, which gives it a pretty good range of
options.  This would naturally be the presentation side of the client,
the actual socket side/protocol would have to be something different,
but xml seems to fit the bill well, you could even send it via a
standard telnet connection.

-- Kwon Ekstrom

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