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                    JOURNAL FOR FRIDAY 21ST NOVEMBER, 2014
______________________________________________________________________________

SUBJECT: A mini update to public dev branch
   DATE: Fri 21 Nov 23:01:03 GMT 2014

Another update! Quite a bit smaller this time.

Firstly this update fixes an issue that prevented users from using passwords
with Unicode characters. When trying to create an account with such a password
the verification always failed.

There are also some minor changes to the wording of a couple of messages.

A new feature - familiar to Java WolfMUD users - is support for 'alternative'
message text markup. This has been added via a new text.Format function. An
example of such markup could be:


  There [is/are] currently %d other player[/s]


The alternatives are represented as '[text/text]'. The text before the slash
is the primary text and the text after the slash is the secondary or
alternative text. Which text is used is determined by a boolean flag to
text.Format which has the signature:


  Format(text string, alternative bool, a ...interface{}) string


The message above could be formatted using:


  Format("There [is/are] currently %d other player[/s]:", count > 2, count-1))


For a count of 2 the message produced would be:


  "There is currently 1 other player."


For a larger count the message would be:


  "There are currently 2 other players."


The main advantage of this markup is being able to author static text files
that can behave dynamically - if you look at the Java WolfMUD you will see it
is used extensivly for combat messages:


  {0} swing[/s] a longsword at {3}.
  {0} lunge[/s] at {3} with a longsword wounding {1}.
  {0} slash[/es] at {3} with {4} longsword.


In these examples the {n} is for substituting names, Him, His, Hers etc. but
this is not available yet. Taking the first message as an example with
Diddymus attacking an Imp with a longsword we would get something like:


  You swing a longsword at an imp.
  Diddymus swings a longsword at you.
  You see Diddymus swing a longsword at an imp.


Which message you would see depends on whether you are Diddymus, the imp or a
spectator.

Fun things to come :)

--
Diddymus


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