[vworld-tech] Telnet negotiation

[ceo]

Brian Hook wrote:
>>you think about it - do you really need it? 
> 
> It's also a client available right now, so I can do server development 
> and defer client development later.
> 

I agree this is very valuable indeed. However, IMHO web-browsers are now 
a more sensible choice for this, where possible.

For someone trying to get experience of "traditional", old-skool MUD 
design and dev, www is not a good idea because it makes the GUI much, 
much nicer than a traditional MUD :P.

There are many people doing serious, boundary-pushing, work in MUD's 
these days, and AFAICS it's usually nothing to do with "loving the feel 
of that old line-based (can't bind to keypresses!) UI". IMHO a crappy 
telnet client is NOT one of the fundamental advantages of a MUD 
(although the *ubiquity* of said client certainly is...).

The only serious reason I've seen not to use www as your LCD UI is the 
lack of push in the HTTP protocol. You can easily work around this, and 
although many people create special non-www clients (e.g. embedded java 
clients, because web-browsers are too rigidly pull-based in their 
design) to speak their "embraced and extended" version of RFC 2616, this 
isn't at all necessary.

A litle lateral thinking can get you to a very effective MUD whose LCD 
UI is a web-browser which supports meta refreshes (which means all of 
them, these days). There's *very* little difference between a MUD with a 
global 1-second tick, and a framed webpage with a chat-window running on 
a 1-second auto-refresh...

But you can get waaaay more interesting (and powerful, and easy-to-use) 
than that, without making your job as server/quest/content coder/author 
significantly harder. In fact, I have a hobby-project at the moment... I 
promise I'll post when (if) I have something interesting to see :).

Adam