FEDTERMX SUPPLEMENT TO THE MANUAL


About

FedTermX is a front-end for Federation 2 for use with Apple Mac computers. This manual is a supplement to the Windows FedTerm manual and should be read in conjunction with it.


System Requirements

FedTermX requires a Mac computer running the OSX 10 operating system. The program will run with 256Mb of memory but will be more reliable, especially if run at the same time as other programs, if at least 512Mb of memory, or greater, is available. The application will run on the new Mac computers with Intel chips.


Installing FedTermX

Download the zip file to your computer and double click the zip file to uncompress it. This will create a folder named FedTermX. Items in this folder will be:

You are recommended to download the zip file into a folder of your choice and unzip the file or alternatively download the zip file to the desktop and then move it into the folder of your choice before unzipping the file.

A suitable folder would be your applications folder. Whichever way you install the application be sure that the resource folder is always in the same location as the application folder as the application will always look in the same folder as itself for the resource folder.


The Resource Folder

The resource folder contains the following folders:

The resource folder will contain the following files:

Initially only the init.xml will exist in the resource folder. The dict.xml and workboard.xml will be added once you run the application.


Running the Application

To run FedTermX double click the FedTermX.app application. If you get a ‘Nil Object Exception Error’ error it is likely that the resource folder is not located in the same directory as the application folder.

If you know how to create one, an alias to the FedTermX.app application file created and positioned on the desktop will avoid having to navigate to the applications folder every time you want to run FedTermX.


The FedTermX Main Window

There are some differences between the Windows and the Mac versions of FedTerm. In particular the main window has the following differences:


Preference Files

The method of saving the background color in the Mac ini.xml file is different to the Windows version so please don't copy a Windows version of this file and use it with the Mac version. However, the Windows planet maps, sound files and player images are identical and can be copied over to the respective Mac resource folders.


Background and Foreground Colors

The text windows can have their background and font colors defined by the user the same as the Windows version.

Changing the map background color is an extra feature on the Mac version. When you use this feature you will be asked if you want to attempt to match the map color to the text window background color. If you decline this option a color selection dialog will be displayed for you to select a color of your choice.

Because the map colors will be mapped to the Apple Mac's default 256 color pallete you will notice that certain background colors will not give a very good match or even cause a dithered color in the map window. With a bit of experimentation you should be able to find background colors that give a good match in the map windows.


Numeric Keypad

The Plus key on the numeric keypad is changed to send 'up' not 'board' as stated in the Windows version manual. (keypad '5' still sends 'board'). Additionally the Minus key on numeric keypad sends 'down'.

Unlike the Windows version it is not necessary for the map window to have the focus to use the numeric keypad keys to send direction commands. FedTermX tries to inhibit the original key text from being sent to the input window. However typing too fast may cause unwanted text when using the numeric keypad.


Movement Commands

There are some differences to the movement control buttons in the Mac version: there are additional 'in' and 'out' buttons.


Logging

The Start Logging menu choice opens the autolog file. The Stop Logging menu choice closes the autolog file.

With logging active you can open the log file with a text editor and the log will still continue to be updated on disk. However, the open log file will not be updated unless you close it and reopen it.

The Auto Logging menu choice when enabled will automatically open and close the log file as needed. A different log file will be created each day with the current date in the filename.


Voting on The Mud Connector

Voting is identical to the Windows version. However, there is an additional rankings button which displays the TMC voting rankings page.


Function Keys

There are 16 function keys that can have text attached to them. They are F1 to F8 inclusive and Alt-F1 to Alt-F8 inclusive.

Pressing a function key or Alt-F-key will send the stored text to the game. Pressing Shift-F-key sends the first line of the text to the input window.

When editing command text the displayed text definition automatically saves itself when you move to a new function key edit window.


Fonts

The Fonts menu choice in the Options menu opens a select font dialog. The default button resets the font to the System font with a zero size. The zero font size tells the application to use the OSX system fonts that are set in your computers preferences menu item. The font will be applied to all the text windows and the list boxes. However, the player stats window, the spaceship stats window and the map infrastructure window font will remain as system to avoid text wrap but the selected color will be applied. The font, style, size and color are saved to the preferences file.


Status Bars

There is a Status Bars menu choice in the Options menu. When enabled status bars will be displayed in an identical way to the Windows version. If you have a small screen you can disable this option and the status bars will be removed enabling the main windows to become larger. While this option is disabled smaller status bars will appear below the Location description window in the Location tab at the top of the main window.


Player and Friends List

The Player and Friends list displays in the same way as the Windows version. However, you bring up the emote window either by double clicking while pointing the mouse at the name or alternatively by holding down the Control key and clicking, again while pointing the mouse at the name in the list. The emote window is different from the Windows popup menu in that the options are selected by clicking buttons. There is an additional option on the Mac emote window which is a button that sends the name of the player to the input window.


Exchange Window

The exchange window has a similar layout as the Windows version. However, there is no ticker display but there are three extra buttons.

To use the exchange buttons click on a commodity in the history listbox and the caption on the update button will change to the selected commodity name. Clicking the update button sends a 'c price' for the commodity displayed on the button. Clicking the buy or sell buttons will send a 'buy' or 'sell' command using the selected commodity shown on the button.

When you re-enter an exchange the exchange window will clear except for the commodity on the update button. This helps when hauling goods as at the destination exchange you can click the update button and get an immediate check price on the commodity you last selected and click the sell button to sell that commodity.

One other extra feature is that the base price of the currently listed commodity is displayed below its picture.


Communications Colors

The Mac version has the option to specify custom font colors for most communication messages. The colors are specified in the entry box in the font selection window. A string of numbers needs to be specified which should be a five number string. The function of each number in the string is to specify one of 9 preset colours. From left to right the numbers will set the colour of the following comms messages:

The preset colors are 0-default, 1-red, 2-blue, 3-green, 4-gold, 5-magenta, 6-cyan, 7-brown, 8-lightgreen, 9-grey.

Therefore if all comms messages are to be the default font colors then the string will be specified as '00000'.

But if standard comms are to be green, XT comms blue, TB comms red, Say comms default and relay comms gold then the string will be '32104'.


Command History

The Mac version has a command history feature. The last 30 typed commands are saved and can be retrieved by repeatedly pressing the up arrow key. After each keypress the respective historical command will be displayed in the text input window. If you wish to send a historical command just press enter key when it is displayed. To exit from the history function press down arrow key.

Commands that are directions like 'n' or short form commands like 'l' or 'gl' are filtered out and not saved in the history buffer.


Workboards

The Mac version provides workboards. Workboards are floating windows which can be resized and stay on top of the FedTermX main window. They can also be positioned anywhere on your screen. It is still possible to carry on using the FedTermX main window while the workboard window is active.

A workboard is a 'helper' window that displays specific information received by FedTermX and has a means of sending game commands in a different way than typing them into the input window associated with the 'work' that a players specific rank requires.

Once a specific workboard is open all the workboard menu items are disabled so you can't open more than one workboard at a time. Workboards will only display if your character has reached the correct rank to be able to use the workboard.


The Cargo Workboard

A Cargo Workboard is available from the Workboards menu.

If you have a rank of Commander or above you can open the Cargo Workboard by clicking the Workboards/Cargo menu item. To close the cargo window click the close button on the window header.

The main element of the cargo Workboard is the Job Listbox on the right side of the window. Clicking the Update button will send a 'work' command to the game and capture the incoming jobs from the fed2 server and list them in the Job Listbox.

They will be listed initially with the last job at the top. If required the header of any column can be repeatedly clicked which will sort the List based on the column data, either ascending or descending. If you are Commander rank, only the Sol to Sol jobs will be displayed, for all other ranks the complete list will be displayed. However, Commanders will still be able to see the complete list in the story window.

To use the cargo board, click and highlight the required job. At this point the collection planet and delivery planet will be displayed on the buttons above the graphic. If you have a picture of a map for the collection planet on disk it will be displayed so you can refer to it to navigate to the AC location.

Next, travel to the collection planet's AC office. At arrival in the AC location click the Accept button and the 'accept' command for the selected job will be sent to the server. The left push button will change to 'Collect'. Click the 'Collect' button which will send the 'collect' command. This collects the cargo and displays the delivery planet map picture, if available on disk. If you need to switch map pictures (if you get lost) you can click the buttons at the top of the graphic. Each button displays the respective map picture when clicked.

You need to watch the incoming text in the main window to check that things are happening as planned. If the Cargo Workboard gets out of synch with real events use the right hand push button, the caption of which will change to 'Reset' while carrying out the job. This button resets everything and reloads the job list.

Map picture files for all the Sol planets, based on the starter maps on the fed2 web site, have been provided with the installation. There are no map pictures for player planets. The pictures are 160 x 130 bitmaps with a filename format 'planetname-map.bmp'. All map pictures are located in the FedTermX:Pictures resource folder, which is in the same folder as the FedTermX application.


Speech Feature

A speech facility is available in FedTermX. Speech in FedTermX utilises the Mac OS X speech function. An Options menu item called 'Speech' when clicked opens the FedTermX speech preferences window. On the left of the window are the speech category checkboxes. Each category enables a range of speech that FedTermX will speak. The categories and speech that have been coded so far are:

There is also a Speech enable/disable checkbox which switches on/off the complete speech facility.

On the right hand side of the preferences window is the Pronounciation dictionary setup. Because the computer voice can have trouble speaking some words a means of providing a phonetic version has been provided so that the voice correctly pronounces the word. For instance the voice is not good at pronouncing the player name 'Djentsch' but if you add 'd jentch' to the dictionary the voice can speak the word as you are expecting it. A button is provided to test the spoken word and its phonetic version. Both edit fields must be populated for this to work.

FedTermX parses words to be spoken and replaces them with the phonetic versions if they exist in the dictionary. If there is no entry the word is spoken as is.

The speech preferences are saved in the 'init.xml' file and the pronounciation dictionary is saved in a dict.xml file, both of which are in the FedTermX support directory.

To change the OS X voice click the Apple system preferences menu item and click the speech icon.


Read the main FedTerm manual