[crossfire] msg/endmsg in maps/objects

Kevin R. Bulgrien kbulgrien at worldnet.att.net
Sun Oct 8 20:11:05 CDT 2006


Mark Wedel wrote:

> Kevin R. Bulgrien wrote:
>> Mark Wedel wrote:
>>> Ideally, I think most of the newlines from the msg/endmsg structures
>>> should be
>>> removed - the client is plenty smart enough to do proper wrapping. 
>>> There are also a few messages which should have the '[fixed]' tag added,
>>> since they are maps or diagrams, and just don't look right when printed
>>> with the proportional font.

BTW, not sure what "proper wrapping" means.  In gcfclient, it mercilessly
chops the text to fit the window.  Word boundaries are not honored.

>> How about blank lines?  Is this discouraged in order to consume less
>> vertical space, or is it seen to be acceptable for improving readability
>> for longer multi-paragraph output?
> 
>   I'd say they should be there for readability.  Without a blank line, it
>   can be very difficult to really see where the paragraph breaks are.
> 
>   In addition, this really only comes up with NPC messages - generally,
>   I'd say those are a relatively small portion of the total text output
>   (things like attack messages being much more prevalant), and I can't
>   imagine a couple extra newlines being that big a deal.

It turns out, blank lines are stripped.  I don't know how to add blank
lines.  This is can be problematic when you use split windows because, for
example, if you walk down the main drag in scorn reading all the signs, all
the output is just strung in sequence with no separation between signs or
headings.  It is pretty hard to scroll back and see what happened, and,
it is hard for any given message to be well formatted so that paragraphs
are separated nicely.

Does anyone know how to output a blank line in message text?  I tried
\n, but it does not seem to work.

>> Is there an advantage to using leading whitespace acceptable to inset
>> example
>> text?  I think so, but wonder what others might think.
> 
>   Depends on what you mean by example text.
> 
>   Also, look at the server/doc/mediaTags file - it supports a limited 
>   number of
> HTML like tags.  What this really means is that within a message itself,
> you can change various attributes (like make the text italic, or change
> the color, use
> fixed width fonts, etc).  Using those tags is probably better than using
> indentation.

mediaTags seem to be of limited usefulness, or are broken.  The following
DOES NOT work...  The tags are output as text, at least in the GTK 1 client.
The tags appear to be applicable only for cases where server code writes
to the client, but not when that text is extracted from an arch msg block.

arch crone
name Servant of Gaea
msg
@match Gaea|gaea|Mother|mother
We are the children of Gaea.  Kneel down and pray your mother.  Feel [color=#00FF00]Her[/color] [b]force[/b] under your feet.
@match *
I am celebrating Gaea, our Mother.
endmsg
x 13
y 6
end

Kevin



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