powwow 1.2.16 README

Powwow is a client program intended mainly for playing MUD.
It implements (a subset of) the telnet protocol.

Files you should have received:

	README		This text.
	Changelog 	What has changed since the last release.
	powwow.doc	Complete documentation. READ this!
	configure	A shell script that will create a Makefile
			suitable for your system
	*.[ch]		Sources.
	tools/*		Additional standalone utilities.
	powwow.help	Online help file (in plain ASCII).
	powwow.6	Man page.
	Config.demo	A demonstrative definition file for powwow
	Hacking		Read this if you want to improve/destroy powwow
			yourself.
	README.follow	Documentation for the 'follow' mini-program.
	README.term     How to make termpowwow

COMPILING

	powwow is built using GNU autoconf scripts, it should detect any
	system dependancies it needs and set the appropriate flags.  Just
	run:

	./configure
	make

	To build the powwow binary.  It will run from any location, but there
	are some settings set at compile time that will make more sense if
	you use the "install" make target to install the binaries and
	documentation together.  For example, POWWOWDIR will default to the
	location that "make install" will put the online powwow documentation,
	making the #help feature work out of the box without modifying any
	settings or flags.

	If you require changes to the build process, please e-mail the problems
	(and hopefully solution) to me at bpk@hoopajoo.net.  Also please
	include your system information (uname -a, etc)

	There are also some other options that may be turned on or off or
	forced using configure.  Try "configure --help" to see the full
	list of compile-time configuration options.

INSTALLING

	If you want powwow's definition files to go in a specific directory,
	set the environment variable POWWOWDIR to that directory. It will be
	searched first for definition files at startup.

	Put the file powwow.6 in a suitable directory if you want users on
	your system to be able to read the long and comprehensive man page ;)

	Powwow supports the MUME editing protocol.  It enables you to edit
	texts locally with your favourite editor.  So far, only MUME supports
	this protocol, but this might change in the future.

	Powwow looks for the editor in the POWWOWEDITOR enviroment variable,
	and if it doesn't exist, in EDITOR, and uses "emacs" as default.  For
	text viewing, powwow looks for POWWOWPAGER, then PAGER, then uses
	"more" as default.

	If you are on a multi-window terminal (such as an X terminal or NCSA
	telnet from a Mac or PC), powwow will let you start the editor in
	another window and remain active.  You will then also be able to edit
	several texts at the same time.  To achieve this, let the first
	character of your editor/pager be '&' (which is then skipped).

	Example: (Bourne shell syntax)

	POWWOWEDITOR=vi		  Use vi as normal editor (same window as
				  powwow)
	POWWOWEDITOR='&emacs'	  Use emacs as editor in a separate window (if
				  you are on an X terminal)
	POWWOWEDITOR='&xterm -e vi'  Use vi in another X window
	POWWOWPAGER='&xterm -e less' Use less as your file viewer in another
				     X window

	If you use a multi-window terminal and have emacsclient installed, it
	is a good choice, since you only need one emacs window for all your
	editing sessions and you don't have to start and exit emacs all the
	time.  Set POWWOWEDITOR='&emacsclient' in that case, and make sure your
	emacs has a running server (put (server-start) in your .emacs file or
	type M-x server-start).

	If you want to use the editing functions, you must execute the
	"#identify" command to notify the server that the client supports the
	protocol. This can also be done with an action; see the documentation
	for details.

	For editing Mudlle programs with emacs, there is a special mode that
	helps you with indenting. To use it, put mudlle.el in a suitable
	place, and add the two following lines to your .emacs file:

	(setq load-path (append load-path '("mydirectory")))
	(autoload 'mudlle-mode "mudlle.el" "Turns on mudlle editing mode" t)

	where you replace mydirectory with the directory where mudlle.el can
	be found. If you put the string -*-mudlle-*- in the first line of
	a mudlle program (i.e. in a comment), then emacs will automatically
	turn on mudlle mode for that file when you edit it.
	The mudlle mode can be customized to some extent. See the source for
	details.

BUGS

	If you have any problems with powwow, try to fix them yourself
	(you have the source, right?) or at least isolate the bugs so
	the maintainer has a fair chance of fixing them. Don't expect
	a bug to be fixed, unless you explain it in detail (expecially
	how to reproduce it) and supply the powwow and OS version,
	as well as the compilation options.
        Suggestions for improvements are also very welcome.

AUTHORS OF CANCAN

	Since powwow is based on cancan, we report also this.

        Mattias Engdegård <f91-men@nada.kth.se> was the original author.
	Many other people have contributed at least as much, including
	Finn Arne Gangstad <finnag@pvv.unit.no>, David Gay <dgay@di.epfl.ch>,
	Gary Dezern <gdezern@satelnet.org>
	and Lai-Chang Woo <vivriel@scs.com.sg>.
	It is unclear who the current maintainer is, but it seems to be
	Finn Arne Gangstad. Ask around at MUME to find out more about cancan.

AUTHORS OF POWWOW

        Massimiliano Ghilardi <max@Linuz.sns.it>, alias Cosmos,
	is the original author, and Gustav H�llberg <f92-gha@nada.kth.se>
	contributed a lot of new features.

	powwow moved to hoopajoo.net in 2005, and is now maintained by
	Steve Slaven <bpk@hoopajoo.net>

        The powwow WWW page is: http://hoopajoo.net/projects/powwow.html

	If you forgot where you downloaded powwow from, you can get it from
	the above address.

	To learn more about MUME, have a look at http://www.mume.org
	which also explains how to connect.

COPYRIGHT

	Powwow is placed under the terms of GPL (GNU General Public License)
	The GPL License can be found in the file COPYING.

			      follow 0.1 README

This mini-program is mainly intended for debugging powwow.
It is completely standalone, and needs to be called with a file-name
(example: "follow mycapture").
Hitting ESC or ^C quits "follow", hitting RETURN prints the next line
of the file, any other key prints the next character (only one) of the file

I know it is a _stupid_ program, but it is useful if you find screen-related
bugs in powwow, i.e. powwow does not print some lines or prints something
wrong.
In that case, if you redirect powwow output to a file and reproduce the bug,
you can use "follow your-filename" to examine the file and see what is wrong

How to send a copy of powwow output to a file:
powwow your-arguments | tee your-filename

There is a sample module included to test module support.  To build
it run:

make plugtest.so

from your powwow source directory.  This will build a test plugin that
can be loaded using:

#module plugtest

If it works, when you do "#help" you will see a new command called
"#plugtest" that is listed.  It will just echo the arguments back
to the terminal.  This is the minimum required to make a functional
module for powwow 1.2.7 and later.

Modules are loaded using the libdl interface with RTLD_LAZY so that
symbol resolution is deferred until as late as possible.  This means
that you should test any commands you create since just because a
module loads, that doesn't mean that there are no undefined references.

The basic requirements for a module are:

1) define a cmdstruct with your command name, help text, and function to
   call
2) add your cmdstruct to the global command list via cmd_add_command in
   your powwow_init function.  You can also initialize anything else you
   need here, it will be called once at module load time.
3) perform whatever extentions you want at runtime in your custom functions

For a more complete example, you should look at the powwow-perl package
which creates the bindings from powwow using the #perl command and allows
access to powwow internals from perl via the powwow:: namespace in perl.
It also includes autoconf support and is probably the most complete
module for powwow currently.

'term' was written by Michael O'Reilly.

If you don't know what term is, then you can ignore this file. :)

Otherwise, if you want term support, read on...

You need to edit the Makefile and edit the TERMDIR variable to the
directory of your term source and client.a.

If you don't want 'term' compression on for powwow, take out the
-DTERM_COMPRESS in the CFLAGS variable in the Makefile.

Edit any of the other variables you find neccessary.

Read the original README for information you might need to know.

Then do "make termpowwow"

Note: Unfortunately one of the setbacks of termpowwow is that it won't
detect unknown hosts, nor will it detect if the host refused the connection.
If you don't get any output from a host after a few moments, then you'll
have to ^C.  I don't think there's any way around this.

(note - term support does not allow multiple sessions...)