Re: RFS: kbtin (try #2)
On Mon, 13 Oct 2003, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 02:04:26AM +0200, Adam Borowski wrote:
> > Windows users typically use zMud and Mushclient, and among Unix people the
> > most popular one is ancient tinyfugue -- dead upstream for 4 years
> I'm sorry, but you've just tripped my FUD-o-meter. TF is not dead upstream,
> there was a release in May this year. Sure, development isn't particularly
> quick, but the current version suits my needs, so I'm not going to nip at
> Hawkeye's heels to get a new one out.
Oh, didn't notice, sorry. Same happened to the Debian maintainer, so at
least I'm in good company -- but even though I don't use tf myself, I
should have checked again.
> > already. There is a bunch of X-based clients, but according to data I can
> > get using RFC 1091, hardly anyone is using them. People seem to want a
> > console/terminal based one, and there are no decent ones available.
> Perchance you could modify TF to suit your needs? Certainly better than
> starting from scratch on your own, unless the TF code is mighty fugly.
Good idea, I did that 5 years ago, using the tintin++ codebase instead.
After that time 80% of lines on diff is different, but still nearly all
tintin++ scripts should be working.
> If you were to tell us (or me, at least) why your one is unassailably
> superior, and why you think that TF is dead upstream for 4 years, then there
> might be more interest.
Now I see that TF is _not_ dead yet, thanks for correcting me.
I used to believe I got everything -- and more than tf provides (with the
exception of a few "useless" things like SOCKS support), but I see I badly
underestimated it. But still, there is a number of things that kbtin can
do and tf can't.
> As it is, all I see is "I have a mud client I want to see in Debian", to
> which pretty much any dedicated MUDder is going to say "why should I drop
> TF, which I know and, well, know, for this one which I've never heard of?".
> Without anyone else willing to use the package, nobody is going to sponsor
> it.
According to data I can get on a major MUD (>100k characters, about 10k
different names logging on every day), there is only one TF user,
thousands of people using zMud and around 50 using kbtin (the number is so
low due a staggering Windows-to-Unix ratio).
I don't know TF well (and can't check out TF5 as my bro just had
accident and I'm pretty busy right now), so I can be wrong at some points,
but:
* tf can't trigger on color codes (to tell apart emotes from the real
thing) (TF5 changelook looks like this might have changed)
* there are issues with the TELNET protocol (NAWS, TTYPE)
* I can remotely crash a player who's using tf at least on some MUDs (!)
* tf doesn't support tintin++ scripts (quite a bunch of clients is based
on tintin++ or at least has similar syntax -- this does include
simple zMud aliases, and zMud is used by a like 75% users)
* no easy integration with micq, etc
* no way to run a local process ("advent", "wimpus", "ssh" -- there's a
popular Polish mud that you can connect to using ssh) without using
tricks like a telnet server on 127.0.0.1
* other things that I'm not sure if can be done using tf's language
Thus, it is not a good choice for someone who already uses tf, but is much
better than tf for someone who's used to tintin++, pueblo or zMud.
Regards,
Adam
/-----------------------\ Shh, be vewy, vewy quiet,
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Segmentation fault (core dumped)
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