IDIOT'S GUIDE TO FED2

ODDMENTS

MISCELLANEOUS COMMANDS

'TIME' gives you the date and time (in US eastern time), and tells you the stardate, and what time the reset is going to happen. It also reminds you how long you have been in the game for your current session.

Most front-end programs, including FedTerm, know how to neatly wrap the lines of text that Fed sends so they fit into the window. However, if you log on using less orthodox methods, you may need the termwidth command, which allows you to format text to the specified width so that the game will take care of wrapping the lines for you. The command is 'TERMWIDTH #' where '#' is the number of characters you want each line to have. You cannot set it to less than 40.

The setting lasts for your game session, or until you turn it off with 'TERMWIDTH 0' or 'TERMWIDTH OFF'.

Here's another obscure technical command... Some generic game front-end programs include the ability to send ANSI codes along with the text. These codes allow the sender to specify what color the text will display in, so anybody else using a front-end that supports ANSI will see messages from the player in glorious technicolor. This actually goes against our philosophy for Fed, where we prefer to leave it up to the receiver how to decide how text should be displayed, rather than imposing it on them.

Usually, the game strips out ANSI color codes, otherwise anybody not using a front-end which supports them would see strange characters along with the text. At least, the game does its best, but there are no guarantees! However, you can stop the game stripping out ANSI codes so that if your front-end knows what to do with them, you can see other players' messages in color. The command is 'ANSI ON' to get the codes, and 'ANSI OFF' to stop them from appearing.


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