Shadowlands Forum: Features

> # Shadowlands Forum 1.9.6 Features

> Shadowlands forum was built based on the comments made by members of the Shadowlands community.

> Appearance and Uses: Shadowlands Forum can be used as a place for your community to hang out:

>          FORUM: away: at 09:21:
>           AWAY:    jeremy: a bit more sleep ;-)
>          FORUM: death has arrived, from localhost at 10:11.
>          FORUM: jeremy has returned at 10:34.
>         jeremy: ugh.  mondaymorning.
>                 hi death
>                 i feel much more normal today.
>                 sigh
>          FORUM: dracofav has returned at 10:35.
>       dracofav: morning everyone
>         jeremy: hi!

> And as a place to coordinate:

>          FORUM: phoenix has returned at 12:33.
>        demaria: Hey Dan, where is our test?
>        phoenix: newhouse
>        demaria: wow.  I'd never of found it.
>        phoenix: newhouse 1 a2
>        demaria: Which room?
>                 a2?
>        phoenix: <nod>
>        demaria: where is the heck is a2?
>        phoenix: by coffee machines?
>        demaria: it sounds like a quake level name.
>        phoenix: damn
>                 hiccups
>                 leave now or soon?
>          death: it's downstairs from the coffee machine
>        demaria: soon
>                 ready to go?
>        phoenix: shoes

> Quick Logins! This should be mentioned first; if you telnet to the Forum from localhost, it will automatically recognize who you are, and let you in without needing to enter your name and password again. Quick and easy!

> For the Users, there are many helpful commands, a gentle and clean-looking interface, and support for common line-editing control keys (see below.) And of course you can turn off ("ignore") types of messages you don't want to hear.

> You can whisper to other users (one or many at a time) with "!to" and "!also". If you're whispering to someone and you quickly want to say something to everyone, you can use "!to all" or "!!" (an abbreviation for "!to all") to do so.

> Large Command Set
> Shadowlands forum also comes with a versatile set of commands that are available to all users. Of these commands, a "!set" command allows preferences to be set to each user's tastes:

> Currently, !set has 15 options:

>          FORUM: Your Current settings:
>          FORUM:     command    !    Current command-prefix char
>          FORUM:     altcmd     /    Alternate command-prefix character
>          FORUM:     autoaway   90   Min idle to auto-!away
>          FORUM:     autotopic  90   Min idle when away before auto-!topic on return
>          FORUM:     autowho    5    Min idle when away before auto-!who on return
>          FORUM:     dsize      6    Number of sides on dice for !roll command
>          FORUM:     hereidle   15   Max idle time for !here listing
>          FORUM:     jetlag     0    Timezone offset from server
>          FORUM:     local      No   Telnet local echo (for screwy telnets)
>          FORUM:	msgchk	   2    Check for new mail (minutes)
>          FORUM:	rot10      Yes  ROT10 digits when performing ROT13
>          FORUM:	rotamt     13   ROT13 rotation distance
>          FORUM:     showaidle  No   Show AWAY:idle users during !showaway/!users
>          FORUM:	tabself    No   Tab-completion includes your own username
>          FORUM:     trueidle   No   Idle time based on last keypress

> (Some of these won't be displayed unless you explicitly set them.)

> A note on the `jetlag` setting: `jetlag` is the number of hours to add to the server's time to get your current time. If the server was in New York and you in California, you would `!set jetlag -3` to compensate.

> Macros save you time:

> !macro lets you create, edit (replace) and delete simple macros. What are these good for? They let you type lots of text or commands with a total of 2 keystrokes. This lets you quickly (for example) set your away message to "brb, coworker question" if you're interrupted at work.

> When you create a macro, it records your keystrokes until you type a blank line; when you later execute the macro, it's as if you're manually typing exactly what you typed when you created it. (Hit Ctrl-E, then the key you assigned to your macro, to execute a macro.)

> Macros can be multiple lines long. They can run Forum commands; just type the command line into the macro as you would to normally run the command. They can execute other macros; just type Ctrl-E and then the key assigned to the macro you're executing. (You can't have two macros call each other in a loop, though.) They can also include control characters such as Ctrl-U, Ctrl-K, and Ctrl-Y; when entering your macro, just type Ctrl-Q followed by the control character you want to include.

> Because anything typed by executing a macro is handled just as if you'd typed it by hand, macros can't be used to flood text. Macros are saved and restored with your other preferences.

> Plus fun features have been built in:

> !roll rolls imaginary dice for fun.

>         matted> !roll 6
>          FORUM: matted rolls 6 dice: 2 6 5 2 2 5 = 22
>         jeremy> !roll 12 8
>          FORUM: jeremy rolls 12 D 8: 2 6 5 2 2 7 2 3 3 2 1 3 = 38
>         jeremy> !roll 150 2
>          FORUM: jeremy flips 150 coins: T H H H H T H T T H H H H H... = 79 heads

> You can use !set dsize 12 to use 12-siders, !set dsize 2 to use coins, or any other number you wish. You can roll up to 1600 dice, or flip up to 1600 coins, at once.

> !spam randomly selects an ascii-art banner file and pastes it into the room. (This command can be disabled.)

>        jeremy> !spam
>        jeremy:     ____
>                   (.   \
>                     \  |
>                      \ |___(\--/)
>                    __/    (  . . )
>                   "'._.    '-.O.'
>                        '-.  \ "|\
>                           '.,,/'.,,mrf

> !8ball consults a magic eight-ball, with around 50 possible answers.

>        jeremy> !8ball
>         FORUM: Only when you least expect it

> Control Keys
> The following shortcut and control keys are supported:

> Ctrl-D Ctrl-D | Log Out (needs to be hit twice)
> Ctrl-E | Expand macro
> Ctrl-F | Toggle reflow mode
> Ctrl-K | "Kut" line to clipboard
> Ctrl-L | Clear screen (think "form-feed")
> Ctrl-O | Turn command character on/off (good for pasting in text which may contain the command character at the start of a line.)
> Ctrl-N | Paste last public line
> Ctrl-P | Paste last public line you sent
> Ctrl-T | ROT13 input line
> Ctrl-U | Erase line, can't get it back
> Ctrl-W | Erase word
> Ctrl-Y | Paste ("yank") line from clipboard
> Tab | Complete word (username or command)

> Re-flow mode for clean pasting:

> The new "re-flow" mode cleans up spacing in pasted text; if the text being pasted is wider than Forum's screen, it will pretend line breaks are spaces, ending a paragraph only when a blank line is pasted. This also cleans up netscape pastes. Use Ctrl-F to toggle "re-flow" mode; it is normally not on.

> For the Sysadmin, we now allow virtual users. No need for someone to have a system account to log into SLForum! Just use the `!admin` command to add them. Also, the preferences header file (slfprefs.h) easily allows the following to be set according to the needs of your chatroom:

> Configurable Guest Privileges!
> Although the program is intended for account holders of a server, provisions have been made to allow guests the ability to chat. Guests currently need to be accepted by someone currently in the chatroom before they may enter.
> * The program makes it easy to disallow guests from logging in at all.
> * There is an optional "how-to" message to tell guests how to log in
> * Guest can be given the ability to roll dice, use banners, and set topics and/or sessions

> Configurable Room Preferences
> * Default Prefix for commands (default is !)
> * Amount of time before someone is idling before they are no longer considered "here"
> * Room Topics on/off
> * Spam command on/off
> * Roll using Star Wars RPG rules, or standard 6-sided-dice

> Tunable Program Preferences
> * Max chat users (up to 62)
> * Maximum number of consecutive blank lines
> * Maximum number of dice you can roll
> * Maximum consecutive topics kept in memory
> * Max lines/sec
> * Max lines in one second
> * Max lines for second avg
> * Location of "banners" directory used by the !spam command
> * Topic reset interval

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