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As you learnt about in the previous chapter, there are several ways that other people may request information about you. This chapter describes the commands that you can use in order to customise what other people see.
Often, you will have already selected your gender when you first logged in. If you haven't, or you wish to change it (huh?), you may do so with the 'gender' command.
If you think you're male, type 'gender m'. The females among us should type 'gender f'. If you're undecided, or you just like being called an 'it' whenever it comes up, type 'gender n', for neuter.
You can determine someone else's gender on, for instance, the finger screen. Some of the lines will begin with His, Her, or It's, as in 'Her total login time is...'.
Your title is the text that appears after your name on the finger and examine screens. (And occasionally in a few other places). If you haven't yet changed it, your title probably reads something like:
-------------------------------------------------------------- slide the newbie, so please treat me nicely --------------------------------------------------------------(You can see what people see when they finger or examine you by typing 'finger me', or 'examine me'. This trick works with a lot of other commands, as well.)
You can change it with the title command. You don't type in your name, just the last part. For instance, typing 'title spends too much time online!' will look like:
-------------------------------------------------------------- slide spends too much time online! --------------------------------------------------------------Something else you can do is use some punctuation at the front of your title to make it look a little different. Here's an example: 'title : first spod of Forest'.
-------------------------------------------------------------- slide: first spod of Forest --------------------------------------------------------------
I'd love to go into that much detail for everything that you can set up, but I think you've got the idea now. Instead, here's an example finger screen, and a little template showing what everything is an where it goes:
-------------------------------------------------------------- sLiDe: first spod of Forest -------------------------------------------------------------- slippery sLiDe has been logged in for 49 minutes and 3 seconds sLiDe is logged in from [jian/127.0.0.1] His total login time is 1 hour, 43 minutes and 17 seconds He is 23 years old Also known as: Joe His email address is: joe_citizen@hotmail.com His web page is: http://realm.progsoc.uts.edu.au/key --------------------------------------------------- plan --- "I want to take it back... I want to start again" Natalie Imbruglia --------------------------------------------------------------The template for finger:
-------------------------------------------------------------- [your recapped name] [your title] -------------------------------------------------------------- [your prefix] [name] has been logged in for [since you logged in] [name] is logged in from [your site] [gender] total login time is [your total login] [gender] is [age] years old Also known as: [aka] [gender] email address is: [email address] [gender] web page is: [webpage] --------------------------------------------------- plan --- [plan] --------------------------------------------------------------And a quick explanation of the new terms and their commands:
-> plan -------------------------------------------------------------- Entering the forest editorThere are lots of other neat things you can do in the editor to make editting lots of text easier. The main commands you'll need to know are:: If you're not sure how to use the editor, enter '.quit' immediately (without the quotes), and read 'help editor' Limitations: 6 lines, 480 characters. -------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------- + "I want to take it back... I want to start again" "I want to take it back... I want to start again" + Natalie Imbruglia Natalie Imbruglia + .end Saving editor buffer... You change your plan. ->
The examine screen is very similar to the finger screen, but there are a couple of extra elements, so we'll show the screen and it's template here:
--------------------------------------------------------------- sLiDe: first spod of Forest --------------------------------------------------------------- A bright yellow plastic slight, including a metal ladder and 15 blue rungs. --------------------------------------------------------------- slippery sLiDe has been logged in for 21 minutes and 53 seconds sLiDe is logged in from [jian/127.0.0.1] --------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------The template for examine:
--------------------------------------------------------------- [name] [title] --------------------------------------------------------------- [description] --------------------------------------------------------------- [prefix] [name] has been logged in for [time since login] [name] is logged in from [your site] --------------------------------------------------------------- [ranks] ---------------------------------------------------------------The fields we haven't seen:
Also available are several 'messages' that can be displayed to other users in certain circumstances. You can get a list of these with the 'msgs' command:
-------------------- messages for sLiDe --------------------- idleMsg : I'm eating dinner blockMsg : Leave me alone blockingMsg: I'm busy atm loginMsg : Everyone say hi! logoutMsg : later ---------------------------------------------------------------These messages can appear to other people in varying contexts:
-> idlemsg I'm eating dinner
When you are idle or afk, people will now see:
sLiDe is idle: I'm eating dinner
-> blockmsg I'm busy atm
When you are blocking them, people will now see:
sLiDe is blocking you: Leave me alone
When someone isn't allowed to talk to you for this reason, they'll get this message.
-> blockingMsg Leave me alone
When you are blocking tells, people will now see:
sLiDe is blocking: I'm busy atm
(This is called being informed, and they turn it on or off with 'inform <name>'. You can list the people you are being informed of with the 'informs' command. You can also request to be informed for everyone with 'inform everyone', or just your friends with 'inform friends'.)
When they are sent this notification, you can set a personalised message for them to also see. When you log in (connect), this is your loginmsg. When you log out (quit), this is your logoutmsg.
-> loginmsg Everyone say hi! Your login informs will now appear: } sLiDe has connected: Everyone say hi! [relation] -> logoutmsg later Your logout informs will now appear: { sLiDe has disconnected: later [relation]INCOMPLETE: hide, webpage, email
That about wraps it up for externally visible information. The rest of the chapter deals with the parts of your profile that configure the way things work just for you.
Colours can not only make your window more aesthetically pleasing, they make it easier to work out who is talking to you, and how.
Before you can use colours effectively, you must be using a colour-compatible terminal, and indicate to the program that this is so.
First, check that you are using a colour compatible terminal. Type 'iscolour'. If your terminal can display colours, you'll get a screen like:
The words on the lines below should be displayed in colour blue, green, cyan, red, magenta, brown, dark brightBlue, brightGreen, brightCyan, brightRed, brightMagenta, brightYellow, white If you can see the above colours, you have an ANSI colour terminal, and you can type 'term ansi' to force it on. If some of the words appear bold, you probably have a vt100-style terminal. Use 'term vt100' to force that on.If the words are actually coloured on your screen, you can follow the instructions and type 'term ansi' to activate colours on your terminal.
Initially, you are given a default colourset, chosen by yours truly. It seems that most people dislike my choices of colours, and so the next section explains how to change them:
The most important command is the 'colours' command. This command shows what your current colourset is. This is the default colourset (which you already have):
-> colours
-------------------------- colour entries --------------------------
player: brightMagenta clan: brightBlue
friends: brightGreen shouts: brightWhite
room: cyan connection: red
movement: brightRed
------------------------------------------------------ 7 entries ---
To change these, you can use the 'colour' command like this: 'colour <class> <colour>'. For instance,
'colour player brightMagenta', to set the first
entry on this list.
A complete list of the colours you may use is on the 'iscolour' screen, above. For technical reasons, it isn't possible to strictly list all of the available classes to colour (it is easily extendable on a per-site basis), but here is a fairly comprehensive standard list, with explanations:
-> colour player brightMagenta Effects from player will now be brightMagenta.
-> colour clan brightblue Effects from clan will now be brightBlue.
-> colour friends brightgreen Effects from friends will now be brightGreen.
-> colour shouts brightwhite Effects from shouts will now be brightWhite.
-> colour room cyan Effects from room will now be cyan.
-> colour connection red Effects from connection will now be red.
-> colour movement brightred Effects from movement will now be brightRed.
-> colour blocking magenta Effects from blocking will now be magenta.
Just to warn you so you don't get confused, some of the colours will default to others if they aren't set. For instance, if you don't have the blocking colour set, 'sLiDe blocks the clan' will probably show up in the colour you have set for the clan channel. In order to completely understand the rules for how this works you have to understand the design of the colour system, which isn't something I'm going into here. ;)