Many other docs are available here.

This should be an easy program to run. See the INSTALL program for how to set it up; then, telnet to the port it's running on. You can telnet from any other machine on the Internet as well; use your unix username/password for the system you're running slforum on.

Once you're in, just type as normal; whatever you say will be sent to everyone logged into the Forum. There are some commands you can use; these are listed when you log in, and the page at http://shadowlands.org/forum/commands.html lists them in detail.

Any line starting with ! is a command; you can list users with !who, mark yourself away from keyboard with !away brb , etc. Using the !away command when you're not paying attention to the Forum is considered good etiquitte, so folks don't think you're just ignoring them. :-)

If you want to use a different command character than !, just type

	!set command /

(to set the command character to /). You may use any character you wish; I've had good success with % or !, and many people prefer / from IRC; I've found that / interferes with pasting in unix pathnames, and long URLs where the line wraps, but you can get around that with Ctrl-O.

If you need to type a line starting with the command character, or paste in text with lines starting with it, hit Ctrl-O to temporarily disable command processing. Then, type your line or paste, and hit Ctrl-O to re-enable you to type commands.

     FORUM: Command character disabled, hit Ctrl-O again to reenable
    jeremy: ! hi !
     FORUM: Command character reenabled
    jeremy>

Now, you'll probably want to talk privately with someone at times; if you wanted to talk to just bob, you'd say

	!to bob

and your prompt will say

	joe to bob>

instead of just

	joe>

When you want to go back to talking to everyone, just type !! and hit enter.

If you just wanted to whisper one sentence to bob, you can use

	!to bob heh, watch this

and it will send that sentence to just bob, and leave you in "public" mode so you don't need to switch back and forth manually.

Guests can log into the Forum with the username "guest". Someone must be in the room to accept them in. Guests can't kick people, but you can kick guests with the !kick command.

Beyond this brief introduction, see the docs directory for features.html and commands.html, and of course, the best way to learn about Shadowlands Forum is to get a bunch of people to log in and play around with it.

Enjoy!

-The Shadowlands Forum Development Team
  Jeremy Monin, Dan Chin, Matt Lochansky