This is the README for Shadowlands Forum,
an easy-to-use, low-resource chat server
your users can get to with any telnet client.
--------------------------------------------

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/features.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 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



