Subject: Clients and Backspace

From: [email-masked] (Dan Odom)
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1993 14:06:22 -0700

OK, guys,  this isn't funny.  Would the person who is responsible
please play LPMud for a month as punishment. :-)

I just switched my MOO playing machine from SunOS to SysV, and my
backspace stopped working.  How do I fix it?  Would a client help?

Speaking of clients, where do I get one for SysV?  mud.el won't work,
and tinytalk won't compile.

-- 
Dan Odom
[email-masked] -- Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS

Support the League for Programming Freedom.  Mail [email-masked]

---

From: Pavel Curtis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1993 14:51:27 -0700

> Date:	Thu, 15 Jul 1993 14:06:22 -0700
> From:	[email-masked] (Dan Odom)
> 

This is one of those questions that I personally hear a lot, so here's a
submission for somebody's eventual FAQ for this list:

The MOO server does not, itself, support backspacing at all; it is supposed to
be provided by your local telnet program.  Here's how:

Most telnet programs provide two different modes of operation.  In one of them,
usually the default, each character you type is immediately sent to the remote
machine, exactly as you typed it; in this character-at-a-time mode, the remote
machine is going to have to provide the `backspacing' service since your local
machine can't do it (because, of course, there's no way for it to `unsend' the
previous character to the remote machine).  Your telnet program is currently
using character-at-a-time mode.

The second mode of operation for telnet programs is called `line-at-a-time'; in
this case, telnet doesn't send *any* of the characters you type to the remote
machine until you hit RETURN.  Until then, the local machine lets you do
backspacing and other corrections just like in normal applications.  When you
hit RETURN, only the corrected line is sent to the remote machine, so it never
knows anything about the various backspaces you typed and thus never needs to
provide any support for backspacing.  This is the mode that the MOO server
expects your telnet program to be in.

Thus, you need to make your local telnet program go into line-at-a-time mode
instead of character-at-a-time mode.  The way you do this is, unfortunately,
different for every system, so you'll have to read the documentation.  Some
telnet programs don't even have such an option, and only provide the
character-at-a-time mode; if you're stuck with one like this, then I'm afraid
you're out of luck and you'll just have to try to type very carefully.  :-(

I hope this helps.

	Pavel