Topic: Intro to TinyFugue
Author: Raevnos
Summary: Raevnos an introduction of TinyFugue (TF). Clear and
straightforward, this'll give you most everything you'll need to get started
with the client by which all other clients are measured.


Introduction to Tinyfugue

This lecture will provide a quick-start guide to using the tinyfugue mush/mud
client effectively. It is intented for people who are casual users, or those
just starting out with the client. If you can program your own macros and
triggers, this is probably too advanced for you. There's a lot of things I'm
not going to mention, so please try to hold off on complaining about things I
missed until the end. If you have questions, raise your hand on <101>, and
I'll get to you.

1 Introduction

1.1 What is Tinyfugue?

Tinyfugue, more commonly called tf, is a mush client primarily for unix-like
operating systems, though it can be used on Windows. I haven't done so
personally, but from what I've heard, it's better on NT than 95 or 98, and
even then has problems compared to the unix version. I assume you already
have tf installed somewhere. If you don't, I'll give a quick install guide at
the end of the lecture. If you have it installed, you can follow along. If
not, the log of this class will be on the Mush101 web site soon.

Tinyfugue is an extremly powerful client, since it has it's own built-in
programming language and support for using it in response to any input from a
game or you. Indeed, many of the client's features are actually implemented in
it's language, making it highly customizable. However, this isn't about
programming for tf, so I won't mention it much more.

1.2 Starting Tinyfugue

You start tinyfugue by typing 'tf' at a shell prompt. Upon startup, tf loads
any commands from a file named '.tfrc' in your home directory, and connects to
the first defined world - more on both of these later. If you don't want tf
to auto-connect to a game, start it like 'tf -n'. There's a few other command
line switches, but I'm not going to mention any of them here.

Now that tf is running, it's time to put it to use.

You say, "Let me know if I go too fast."

1.3 Some useful commands

Normally, when you start tf, you'll see the screen split into two with a line
of dashes. The top part is the output buffer, where text from a mush appears,
and the bottom part is the input buffer, where you can type stuff to go to the
mush. If you don't see this line, try typing /visual on.

All tf commands start with a slash. Anything else is sent to the mush.

/visual on is a command that attempts to split the screen in two. If it
doesn't work, there's probably something wrong with the settings of your
terminal.

The most useful command is /help. It is, obviously, the built-in help system.

/help <command or topic> gives help on the given topic, just like a mushes
help.

/more on is a command that causes new output from the mush to queue up
instead of immediately being displayed in the output buffer. You can scroll
down through the queued text with the tab key. When there's queued text, the
status line will say so on the left side, along with the number of lines in
the queue.

And, of course, you can exit tf with /quit.

2 Worlds

2.1 What are they?

In tf terms, a world is a game the client knows about, running on a specific
host and port, possibly with a character and password as well. Multiple worlds
can be defined, and you can be connected to many worlds at once, with the
ability to switch between them at will. Non-commands entered into the input
buffer will be sent to the currently active world. When new text comes in from
a world that's not the active one, a message will come up letting you know.
Also, the current world is displayed on the status bar.

2.2 Making a world

Worlds are defined with the /addworld command. Each world needs at least a
name it's called by, a server, and a port. The typical syntax for a MUSH world
looks like:

/addworld -T"tiny" M*U*S*H pennmush.org 4201 Raevnos notmypassword

The -T"tiny" switch tells tf that the world is a tiny-style server. The type
affects wether or not the world has prompts - like some muds do - and how
auto-login works. In this case, tiny-style servers have no prompt, and login
is done with ``connect <name> <password>''. tf normally does a good job of
auto-detecting type if it's not given, but sometimes net lag can trip it up,
so it's best to always give the specific type. /help /addworld lists more
types for various flavors of muds. M*U*S*H is the name of the world, which is
used to connect to it, among other things. pennmush.org is the server, and
4201 is the port. The last two items are a character name and password. If
these are present, when you connect to the world, tf tries to log in using
them. If they aren't present, you have to log in manually.

<101> Trispis raises his hand.

You say, "Yes?"

Trispis says, "Is the "connect <name> <password>" the only distinguishing
feature of the 'tiny' world type?"

Trispis says, "or is it the only necessary/relevant one?"

You say, "That and the lack of a prompt."

2.3 Connecting and switching between worlds

You can connect to a defined world with /connect <world name>. You can also
connect to anonymous worlds with /connect <host> <port>. When you;'re
connected to multiple worlds, you can switch between them in a number of ways.

/fg <world> switches to that world. Esc-f and /fg -> switch to the next
world, and Esc-b and /fg -< switch to the previous world. There's also another
way that I'll mention later. Also, in many cases, you can use ALT instead of
Escape, to the same effect.

When you quit a world, you can no longer make it the active one until you
reconnect to it.

<101> Trispis says, "Um... another question."

You say, "Yes?"

Trispis says, "I've used tf some... and the esc-f and esc-b things weren't
setup after I installed. I had to get help (and read some of the /help files)
to find out how to put those things into the .tfrc so they would work. Can you
review that briefly?"

Caelum says, "/load world-queue.tf"

Trispis says, "Some kind of way to make keycombo's work, or something (my
.tfrc is at home)."
Trispis hrms.
Trispis says, "Maybe it was something else."

Caelum says, "oh, and /load bind-bash.tf"

Raevnos believes those are default keybindings.

Trispis says, "Oh... wait. I remember..."

You say, "World-q, which I mention later, is a different way of switching
between worlds."

Trispis says, "I had to /bind ... I wanted them to be ctrl+f and ctrl+b
(instead of esc+)"
Trispis says, "Sorry. /:"

Raevnos nods.

Caelum says, "c-b c-f are char movements by default"

2.4 Storing and loading worlds

If you quit tf and restart it, you'll see that any worlds you defined are
gone. Luckily, it's easy to save all your worlds to a file, with the command
/saveworld <some file>, which prints out tf code in the given filename that
will recreate the worlds when it's loaded.

But even after you do this, you still won't automatically get those worlds
back when you start tf - you need to use another command, /load, that reads a
file and runs commands in it. In order to do that, you need to use a .tfrc
file. Remember that tf runs any commands in this file on startup. So, just add
a line like /load <world file> in your .tfrc file, and you'll have the worlds
you saved available.


Raevnos mentions them (Ctrl-f and Ctrl-b) too, later.

Caelum says, "I kept meaning to write bind-vi.tf but it turned out a bit
difficult so I didn't go through with it"

Trispis hrms.
Trispis says, "I thought we put our worlds in the .tfrc. ???"
Trispis says, "This is a new one on me."

Caelum says, "this is just an easier way"

You say, "They can go there too if you really want."

Trispis says, "If you /addworld again and /saveworld <file> again, does it
append?"

Trispis says, "Or overwrite?"

Caelum says, "overwrite"

Now, you can use the .tfrc file directly for saving the worlds, but there's a
few reasons not to. First, /saveworld overwrites the file it saves to, unless
you use /saveworld -a, in which case it just tacks the worlds onto the end of
the file. If the file already has world definitions in it, you can get
harmless but annoying warning messages about redefining them. Secondly, if the
world file is loaded by the .tfrc file, you can put other things as well in
.tfrc without having to remember to /saveworld -a, as well as put it on the
web or give it to other people without having to edit out passwords.

Raevnos answers. ;)

Trispis grins.

3 Useful commands, libraries and keystrokes

3.1 Commands

3.1.1 /log

You can log output from a world to a file with /log -w <filename>.
When you're logging, the status bar will tell you, and you can turn off
logging with /log off. The -w switch tells tf to log only output from the
world that was current when you start logging. There's a number of other
options to control what gets logged, listed in the /help.

3.1.2 /recall

Tinyfugue's greatest lacking is not having a truely scrolling output buffer.
You can scroll down through backed-up text with tab, if you have /more on -
but you can't go back easily, unless your terminal program lets you scroll
it's window.

Enter /recall. In it's simplest form: /recall <number>, it will bring up the
last <number> lines and redisplay them. It also accepts a lot of more
complicated forms, recalling according to time, or a pattern it looks for in
lines, and others. See /help /recall for more information.

One other useful form, though, is /recall /<number> <wildcard pattern>. This
will recall the last <number> lines matching the pattern, which is by default
a wildcard one like the softcode match() function uses. For example, /recall
/5 *Raevnos* will return the 5 most recent lines with my name in them.

Trispis says, "oooh. neat. (:"

Caelum types /recall /100 <Public> and such alot

Raevnos nods.

3.1.3 /cat

If you're cut-and-pasting large blobs of text with line breaks in them, you
can use /cat to force it to be sent all as one line to the world. Once you
enter /cat mode, everything typed in is appended to a buffer, with line breaks
removed, and sent after a line with a single period is entered.

Trispis says, "Oh, Excellent. Yeah. Very useful."
Trispis says, "That also looks useful. (:"

Raevnos uses it a lot too.

3.1.4 @decompile/tf

PennMUSH's @decompile lets you use the tf switch to display an attribute in a
form that a simple tf macro can detect and use to put the attribute into the
input buffer for editing. TinyMUSH and Rhost don't support this, but you can
use softcode to display the attribute in the proper format. See help
@decompile3 on the MUSH for details, and always set your @tfprefix attribute
to help prevent spoofing!

<101> Trispis says, "No entry for '@tfprefix'."

<101> Professor Raevnos says, "It doesn't have it's own help entry."

<101> Trispis says, "Oh."

3.2 The tf library

Tinyfugue comes with a library of additional commands. I'll cover some of the
ones I find most useful here. All library files can be loaded with /load
<library file>, either in your .tfrc, or from tf directly.

The library itself is located in a directory called tf-lib. It's location
depends on where tf was installed in. ~/tf-lib or /usr/local/lib/tf-lib/ are
common places for it. Help is available for some of them files, via /help
<filename>, or in the files themselves.

3.2.1 kbstack.tf

This file provides keyboard bindings to keep a stack of text on. You can be
typing something in the input buffer, then store it on the stack, type
something else and send it to the mush, and then restore the orginal text from
the stack.

ESC-Down saves the contents of the input buffer to the stack, and ESC-up
returns the most-recently stored item to the buffer.

<101> Trispis says, "You got more detail on this one, or should I ask my
question?"

<101> Professor Raevnos says, "Ask."

Trispis says, "You say "most-recently stored item" is returned to the buffer.
I'm guessing that means it can store several things in the stack. When it
returns that "most-recent" one, is it cleared from the stack, making the next
esc-down get the one before that one?"

You say, "Yes."

Trispis says, "Okay. Cool."

You say, "It's a last-in, first-out stack."

Trispis nods. Got it.

3.2.2 world-q.tf

This file provides a keyboard binding for another to cycle through worlds,
going to the next world with activity in it with ESC-w. For example, if WorldA
is my current world, and text arrives from WorldB, I can use ESC-w to switch
to WorldB, instead of having to use /fg or cycle through to it with ESC-f as
described earlier.

When there are no more worlds with activity, ESC-w switches back to the
previous current world.

Trispis says, "That last bit..."

Trispis says, "Sorta like the quickview on a tv remote? To switch between two
channels, back and forth?"

You say, "Yeah."

Trispis says, "cool"

3.2.3 spell.tf

This file allows you to use ctrl-s to spellcheck your input buffer. Like old
versions of Webster, it only reports misspelled words, but that's still very
useful.

Trispis says, "Cool."

3.3 Keystrokes

These are some useful key combinations, in addition to ones mentioned
earlier.

3.3.1 Brace matching

When the cursor is on a parenthesis, bracket or brace, you can use ctrl--
(control dash) to move to the matching one. Handy for softcoding.

Trispis says, "ooooh. I'm gonna like THAT one. (:"
Trispis says, "does it actually do matching? or just go to the next closing
one?"

You say, "It goes to the matching one."
Trispis says, "eeeexcellent. (:"

You say, "Hmm. It seems to be esc-- on my tf here at work, but it was ctrl--
on my tf at home where I wrote this. :P"

Trispis nods.

You say, "Wierd. Oh well, use whichever one works."

You say, "Whoever made the tf RPM I installed on my comptuer at home might
have set it up differently, sinc esc-- works on a third tf installation."

3.3.2 History list

Tinyfugue keeps a history of every line you enter, either tf commands or text
sent to a world. You can cycle to the previous line from your current position
in the history list with ctrl-p, and to the next line with ctrl-n. If you
enter the same thing two or more times in a row, it only takes up one entry in
the list.

3.3.3 Buffer movement

In the input buffer, in addition to the arrow keys for moving single
characters or rows, there's also keystrokes available for faster positioning.

You can use ctrl-e to move to the end of the buffer, ctrl-a to move to the
start, ctrl-f to move forward one word, and ctrl-b to move backwards one word.

There are also keystrokes for deleting chunks of text, or manipulating words
by making them upper case, lower case, or capitalized. These and others are
listed in /help keys.

4 Conclusion

There's a bunch of stuff I haven't covered, or only touched on briefly. This
is an introductory class, and I didn't want to be /too/ overwhelming. So, if
there's enough interest, we can arrange for continuations, getting more
advanced or covering various topics in detail. But in the meantime, read the
/help, and try out various features.

There's a tinyfugue mailing list you can join and ask questions on, as well.
Information on joining it is at the Tinyfugue homepage,
http://tf.tcp.com/~hawkeye/tf/.
That's also where you can find the source to download and compile.

Caelum says, "we're at 4.0 s1"

Trispis says, "?"

Caelum says, "of the latest TF version"

Trispis says, "Oh."
Trispis says, "Um... question/request."

You say, "Yes?"

Trispis says, "I know this is a bit more advanced, but it's common in most gui
clients these days and will probably be interesting to folks."
Trispis says, "Most gui clients these days allow you to have your client
trigger a response to specific displayed text from the game. For example:
Scrabble: It is now your turn. -- In my tf (and I've forgotten how, I just
plagiarize from other peoples' stuff), I have that trigger a /beep 5 (to alert
me it's my turn if I've drifted off to sleep in my la-z-boy."
Trispis says, "Can you give a basic example of that?"

Caelum says, "yeah, I don't think anything has better trigger facilities than
tf at the moment"

You say, "tf can do that."
Raevnos tries an example.
'/def -w"M*U*S*H" -t"Scrabble: It is now your turn" scrabble_alert=/beep 5'
will create a trigger that beeps 5 times when the Scrabble string comes from
the world named M*U*S*H.
You say, "That's an exact match. If you want to match specific words or parts
of a line, stick a * on each end of what you want to match."

Trispis says, "and the trigger is named "scrabble_alert" (just in case they
read about /undef and want to remove it)."

Raevnos nods.

Trispis says, "Thanks."

Caelum says, "something else useful, if I want to paste a bunch of crap on a
channel I can type /paste +pub, then /endpaste when I'm done"

Trispis hrms.
Trispis says, "sorta like that thing with /cat and . ?"
Trispis says, "/cat"

Caelum nods.

Trispis says, "I went to the store and..."
Trispis says, "You wouldn't believ what I saw..."
Trispis says, "blah blah"
Trispis says, "."
Trispis says, "I could do the same with /paste and /endpaste?"
Trispis puts "+pub" at the beginning of that /cat example.

You say, "The difference is that /paste will put a prefix before each line,
and /cat glomps everything into one line."

Trispis says, "Ah."
Trispis says, "Okay. Cool."

You say, "One more!"


5 Installing Tinyfugue on a Unix-like system.

First, download the tinyfugue source from the tf webpage, URL given earlier.
You want the tf 4.0s1 version. Next, unpack it with tar xzf tf-40s1.tar.gz.
This will extract the files into a directory called, surprisingly enough,
tf-40s1.

In that directory, run 'sh unixmake'. You'll see a list of locations where
the tf files will be installed, and be told what to change if you want them to
go in different places. Once all the locations are to your liking, sit back
and do something else for a while while it compiles and installs. Delete the
tf-40s1 directory, and you're ready to go.

Trispis whees. (:

Caelum says, "cool :)"

Trispis says, "And PuTTY is a cool telnet client for Windows, if you need one
of those to access your account that has tf. (:"

You say, "Okay, anything else?"

Trispis has lots more questions, but really has to finish setting up this
fileserver so he can go home and sleep tonight.

David says, "What if you don't run the system? If it's just a shell account?"

Caelum says, "it will put stuff in your home directory, it's pretty
intelligent about it though"

David nods.

Trispis goes back to work. /:
Trispis waves. Thanks again, Raev!

Paul will find that really useful, thanks. :o)