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Old 05-16-2012, 12:00 AM   #54
camlorn
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Join Date: Aug 2011
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Re: Why not exploit the telnet protocol?

First, let me say that I feel rather stupid. I didn't notice this was a two-page thread started in 2003, and was arguing based on the bit I read...oopse.

As for prompts, sure:

In my particular screen reader, given that most applications on windows like to put "status" information as the bottom-most line in the window--anything from file attributes to download progress to anything--a hotkey was implemented to read this line. Mushclient allows one to set this line.

In my current setup, I've got a trigger that takes any line starting with "status:" and sends it to that line.

Essentially, I don't have to hear the prompt after everything--skipping it will skip a bunch of other stuff--but I can still read it any time. I could spend 5-10 minutes or whatever to figure out your prompt that I can't change well enough to write an equivalent trigger, or I can just use mushclient's ability to import triggers from another world at creation--it has a little thing, import defaults from another world yes/no.

So, I just change your prompt to match my trigger--it normally takes 30 seconds--and I'm done. Truth be told, I should probably use <status>prompt goes here</status> to be extra safe, but all the same.

This becomes a particularly big deal on some of the lpmuds with all sorts of important changing-every-tick guild stats that must be monitored (I'm looking at you, 3 kingdoms); I'll typically make my prompt only numbers, memorize the order, and send it to that bottom line, making reading of the prompt happen in half the time it otherwise would, and essentially giving it a keystroke.

If this didn't help, I can't really give a better explanation, as it's sort of something you have to experience. That said, prompts are the number one answer for the "I can't read the score because it has graphical bars" question, as well. (In fact, with creative aliasing and the ability to imbed newlines in the prompt, you essentially have implemented an unintended custom score; I've never gone this far, but the potential exists.)
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