[MudWalker] Greetings/Feature Requests
James Schend
james
Wed Jul 28 19:27:26 PDT 2004
Hello all. I didn't realize that there was a mailing list, so I sent
some feature requests directly to Kevin and I thought you'd all like to
see them as well. Below, I've copied the messages so you can all read
them. (Sorry for the long email.)
---
From: james at schend.net
Subject: MUD Walker
Date: July 18, 2004 5:38:05 PM PDT
To: kpreid at mac.com
As a frustrated Rapscallion user who wants to ditch Classic, I've been
spending some time going through MacOS X-native MUD clients. So far in
my search, your client is tied with Cantrip as having the most stuff I
need. Here's a link to the conversation:
http://realbasichelp.com/RB/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1201
And here's a short snippet of the features I'm looking for:
1) NORMAL (hopefully Aqua) windows/menus. Not X Windows, not "metal",
nothing horribly ugly. HydraMUD uses "metal" and it looks terrible.
2) ANSI support, including the ability to customize ANSI colors *and*
background color.
3) Ability to construct triggers that use text-to-speech to announce
something when triggered.
4) Ability to easily enable and disable triggers. If doesn't have to
be like Rapscallion's palettes, but it needs to be quicker than
choosing a menu item.
5) Logging ability. Must be able to log both what the MUD supplies,
AND the commands I send.
6) General Mac-like behavior. Drag&drop, basic AppleScript, etc.
7) (New) Must be document-based like Rapscallion. I double-click a
document, the client opens, connects to the server in the document,
runs the login script. The vast majority of the ones tested require the
user to click the MUD from a 'wizard' when you boot, which makes it
impossible (or difficult) to make 5 different documents, all with
different triggers, pointing to the same MUD. (Instead you'd have to go
through the wizard to create 5 different MUDs.)
Anyway, thanks for listening.
- James Schend
---
From: kpreid at mac.com
Subject: Re: MUD Walker
Date: July 24, 2004 7:20:16 AM PDT
To: james at schend.net
On Jul 18, 2004, at 20:38, James Schend wrote:
> As a frustrated Rapscallion user who wants to ditch Classic, I've been
> spending some time going through MacOS X-native MUD clients. So far
> in my search, your client is tied with Cantrip as having the most
> stuff I need. Here's a link to the conversation:
>
> http://realbasichelp.com/RB/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1201
>
> And here's a short snippet of the features I'm looking for:
>
> 1) NORMAL (hopefully Aqua) windows/menus. Not X Windows, not "metal",
> nothing horribly ugly. HydraMUD uses "metal" and it looks terrible.
> 2) ANSI support, including the ability to customize ANSI colors *and*
> background color.
MudWalker has these, as I imagine you've already found.
> 3) Ability to construct triggers that use text-to-speech to announce
> something when triggered.
Hm. I don't have that. Added to the list.
> 4) Ability to easily enable and disable triggers. If doesn't have to
> be like Rapscallion's palettes, but it needs to be quicker than
> choosing a menu item.
Would being able to enable/disable triggers from alias scripts be
sufficient?
> 5) Logging ability. Must be able to log both what the MUD supplies,
> AND the commands I send.
MudWalker does this - ~/Library/Logs/MudWalker Log *.txt
> 6) General Mac-like behavior. Drag&drop, basic AppleScript, etc.
Unfortunately, I have no AppleScript support beyond that which any
scriptable Cocoa application has.
> 7) (New) Must be document-based like Rapscallion. I double-click a
> document, the client opens, connects to the server in the document,
> runs the login script. The vast majority of the ones tested require
> the user to click the MUD from a 'wizard' when you boot, which makes
> it impossible (or difficult) to make 5 different documents, all with
> different triggers, pointing to the same MUD. (Instead you'd have to
> go through the wizard to create 5 different MUDs.)
>
> Anyway, thanks for listening.
Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not currently working on MudWalker, but
text-to-speech and some means of controlling triggers will definitely
be in the next version when it's released.
--
Kevin Reid <http://homepage.mac.com/kpreid/>
---
From: james at schend.net
Subject: Re: MUD Walker
Date: July 25, 2004 12:21:20 AM PDT
To: kpreid at mac.com
>> 3) Ability to construct triggers that use text-to-speech to announce
>> something when triggered.
>
> Hm. I don't have that. Added to the list.
Thanks! MacOS has had speech libraries in it FOREVER and they're
extraordinarily handy, but for some reason a lot of developers
completely ignore them and don't bother implementing it. Even having
your text documents in a word processor read out loud is great because
it helps you identify typos. Having instant messages read is a dream,
but I have to use AOL Instant Messenger because Apple's own iChat
doesn't support it.
What I'm looking for is something like this. When the MUD sees:
Bob says OOC 'Hey, all.'
I'd have to have the client speak "Bob O O C Hey, all." So the trigger
should be able to match the name at the beginning and the contents of
the quotes and place that inside of the spoken text.
(This is a feature in Rapscallion. The Rapscallion trigger used:
^%w says OOC '%s'
And in the "spoken text" section:
%1 O O C, %2
It was easy to set up.)
>
>> 4) Ability to easily enable and disable triggers. If doesn't have to
>> be like Rapscallion's palettes, but it needs to be quicker than
>> choosing a menu item.
>
> Would being able to enable/disable triggers from alias scripts be
> sufficient?
I'd prefer an arrangement like Rapscallion's palettes, if you've ever
used them. Look at this image:
-------------- next part --------------
Here was a non admissible message part of 'image/jpeg' MIME type. It
has been automatically discarded before sending the message to the
list.
-------------- next part --------------
The 'notifications' palette is a collection of the speech triggers I
use for the various channels on the MUD. The checkbox to the left
provides a way to instantly turn off triggering for that channel... if
OOC is spammy, for instance, I can just uncheck it so my speakers
aren't going constantly. Clicking the name of the trigger will cause
it to trigger instantly and, if the trigger expects variables (like the
speech ones), it'll ask you what the variables are:
-------------- next part --------------
Here was a non admissible message part of 'image/jpeg' MIME type. It
has been automatically discarded before sending the message to the
list.
-------------- next part --------------
This is unique to *all* other MUD clients I've found. None of them
have provided a quick and easy way to disable trigger without opening a
menu, selecting 'triggers', finding the one you want on the list, then
clicking 'inactive' or 'disable.' You can't do it on a whim, it takes
a lot of effort, and there's no visual way of seeing which are enabled
or not without opening up the menu again. In addition, there's no way
in most of these clients to test a trigger without the MUD triggering
it, which is something you can do easily with Rapscallion's
arrangement. It's the #1 feature why I'm still using Rapscallion even
though it hasn't been updated in years and years.
The problem with alias scripts is that it still requires me to either
type something in, or go to a menu, to do. It also doesn't solve the
problem of not knowing which triggers are enabled and which are
disabled.
(Clicking on a 'ticker' (or timer) BTW will cause the timer to go off
immediately.)
>
>> 5) Logging ability. Must be able to log both what the MUD supplies,
>> AND the commands I send.
>
> MudWalker does this - ~/Library/Logs/MudWalker Log *.txt
I should have gone into more detail on this one. What I meant was
automatic logging, so that the client starts logging as soon as the MUD
connects without me having to do anything. (If MudWalker has this, I
didn't notice it in the settings... I looked in /Logs, and although I
used MudWalker for several hours, there's nothing in there.)
Again, ideally, it'd be able to separate logs by 1) which file was in
use at the time (i.e. a file named ES-Bob should be put in a different
log from a file named ES-Ted), 2) date. It would also be nice to be
able to change which directory is logged to. (I like to keep all my
MUD-related data in a single folder in my Documents folder.)
>
>> 6) General Mac-like behavior. Drag&drop, basic AppleScript, etc.
>
> Unfortunately, I have no AppleScript support beyond that which any
> scriptable Cocoa application has.
I don't know what that is. I only meant the 4 basic Open, Print, Save,
Quit... I don't do much scripting beyond those anyway.
>>
>>
>> Anyway, thanks for listening.
>
> Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not currently working on MudWalker,
> but text-to-speech and some means of controlling triggers will
> definitely be in the next version when it's released.
Hm. Who is maintaining MudWalker at the moment? Did I send this to
the wrong email address?
Anyway, thanks again. I've been constantly frustrated since my switch
from MacOS 9 to OS X.2 in the lack of MUD clients that implement the
features that Rapscallion had in 1998 (on both MacOS and Windows... the
Windows ones are particularly poor.) I understand that it's kind of a
niche and it's not like Adobe or Microsoft is working on one, but you'd
think in 6 years someone would have emulated Rapscallion. I just did
some benchmarks a few weeks ago and found that, surprisingly, my entire
computer is 30-40% slower when the Classic environment is running, even
if it's only running a single application. Since Rapscallion is the
only Classic application I have left, it needs to go... but before it
can go, it needs a replacement. I was going to write one myself, but I
simply don't have the time to learn Objective-C, a whole new API, and
do it. Sorry for being so demanding a user. :) You get used to
something over half-a-decade and it's so hard to adjust to something
different...
>
> --
> Kevin Reid <http://homepage.mac.com/kpreid/>
---
From: kpreid at mac.com
Subject: Re: MUD Walker
Date: July 28, 2004 11:12:30 AM PDT
To: james at schend.net
On Jul 25, 2004, at 3:21, James Schend wrote:
>>> 3) Ability to construct triggers that use text-to-speech to
>>> announce something when triggered.
>>
>> Hm. I don't have that. Added to the list.
>
> Thanks! MacOS has had speech libraries in it FOREVER and they're
> extraordinarily handy, but for some reason a lot of developers
> completely ignore them and don't bother implementing it. Even having
> your text documents in a word processor read out loud is great because
> it helps you identify typos. Having instant messages read is a dream,
> but I have to use AOL Instant Messenger because Apple's own iChat
> doesn't support it.
>
> What I'm looking for is something like this. ...
I just added the script function @@speak(text[, voice]). Is that
sufficient?
>>> 4) Ability to easily enable and disable triggers. If doesn't have
>>> to be like Rapscallion's palettes, but it needs to be quicker than
>>> choosing a menu item.
>>
>> Would being able to enable/disable triggers from alias scripts be
>> sufficient?
>
> I'd prefer an arrangement like Rapscallion's palettes, if you've ever
> used them. Look at this image:
>
> <rap_palettes.jpg>
>
> The 'notifications' palette is a collection of the speech triggers I
> use for the various channels on the MUD. The checkbox to the left
> provides a way to instantly turn off triggering for that channel... if
> OOC is spammy, for instance, I can just uncheck it so my speakers
> aren't going constantly. Clicking the name of the trigger will cause
> it to trigger instantly and, if the trigger expects variables (like
> the speech ones), it'll ask you what the variables are:
I've added such a window, with the enable/disable checkboxes.
Specifying parameters would be difficult, though, because my script
language interface is too general to check whether the script uses any
parameters.
>>
>>> 5) Logging ability. Must be able to log both what the MUD supplies,
>>> AND the commands I send.
>>
>> MudWalker does this - ~/Library/Logs/MudWalker Log *.txt
>
> I should have gone into more detail on this one. What I meant was
> automatic logging, so that the client starts logging as soon as the
> MUD connects without me having to do anything. (If MudWalker has
> this, I didn't notice it in the settings... I looked in /Logs, and
> although I used MudWalker for several hours, there's nothing in
> there.)
>
> Again, ideally, it'd be able to separate logs by 1) which file was in
> use at the time (i.e. a file named ES-Bob should be put in a different
> log from a file named ES-Ted), 2) date.
Look in the Logs folder in the Library folder in your home folder.
They're named by the document name, though not by date.
> It would also be nice to be able to change which directory is logged
> to. (I like to keep all my MUD-related data in a single folder in my
> Documents folder.)
I should add this.
>>> 6) General Mac-like behavior. Drag&drop, basic AppleScript, etc.
>>
>> Unfortunately, I have no AppleScript support beyond that which any
>> scriptable Cocoa application has.
>
> I don't know what that is. I only meant the 4 basic Open, Print,
> Save, Quit... I don't do much scripting beyond those anyway.
As far as I know, they'll work fine.
>> Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not currently working on MudWalker,
>> but text-to-speech and some means of controlling triggers will
>> definitely be in the next version when it's released.
>
> Hm. Who is maintaining MudWalker at the moment? Did I send this to
> the wrong email address?
I am. I simply haven't had much inclination to work on it, since
MudWalker as it is suits my own needs very well.
Feel free to bug me to release the next version.
(If you don't mind, I'd appreciate any further questions or suggestions
be directed to the MudWalker mailing list
<https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mudwalker>.)
--
Kevin Reid <http://homepage.mac.com/kpreid/>
---
> I just added the script function @@speak(text[, voice]). Is that
> sufficient?
I'm sure that's fine. Now that I know MudWalker has logging, I can
actually start using it on a daily basis and start duplicating all the
triggers/scripts/whatnot I have in Rapscallion. Thanks.
> I've added such a window, with the enable/disable checkboxes.
>
> Specifying parameters would be difficult, though, because my script
> language interface is too general to check whether the script uses any
> parameters.
Thanks, that's great. Being able to turn triggers on or off instantly
is the important part, clicking them to test if they're working is less
so.
> Look in the Logs folder in the Library folder in your home folder.
> They're named by the document name, though not by date.
Oh, yes, my apologies, I was looking in the wrong Library folder.
Still not used to this OS X.
- James Schend
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