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                    JOURNAL FOR FRIDAY 2ND DECEMBER, 2016
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SUBJECT: A colour update + a look at Go 1.8
   DATE: Fri  2 Dec 23:44:13 GMT 2016

I've just pushed the colour changes to the public dev branch for those who
cannot wait for the release :)

In the end I decided to add SendGood, SendBad and SendInfo methods to the
buffers in the message package. It avoids having to add the text package to
every file in the cmd package. It also means that the methods are 'between'
the messages being sent and the colours being used. In the future it will be
possible to have the methods check for things like per player colour themes.

If you want to see what the new colours look like I've a screenshot of a
simple session: colors.png

Some readers have questioned my use of 'colour' and 'color'. When I'm writing
I try to consistently use 'colour' - I'm British! When writing code I try to
use 'color' consistently, as that is the only spelling used in the Go sources
and also seems to be the case in many other programming languages. When it
comes to spelling I'm terrible and often swing between English and American
forms simply because I spell phonetically and an American spelling often makes
more sense. I also read a lot of American books and manuals which tend to
influence my spelling. Fortunately I have a good spell-checker with an English
dictionary that gently warns me if I use an American spelling. I also use the
'dict' and 'diction' programs quite a bit when writing.

This latest updated also includes a fix for a nasty bug I discovered. If a
player enters input consisting of only stop words then the player's goroutine
will panic and disconnect the player gracefully. No harm is done, it's just
frustrating for the player.

I hope to push out v0.0.2 over the weekend. However this may not be possible
as things are getting busy with the build up to Christmas. For example, I know
I've got to clamber into the loft and get the boxes of Christmas decorations
down :|

I've also been using the Go 1.8 beta that was pushed out this week. Compiled
with Go 1.7.4 the server uses between 9Mb and 11Mb for just over a thousand
players. Compiled with the beta the server uses only 7Mb. It's interesting to
note that with Go 1.7.4 the usage varies quite a bit between 9Mb and 11Mb
while with Go 1.8 it's constantly 7Mb. The server also seems to run just a tad
smoother when compiled with Go 1.8. However for v0.0.2 I'll probably stick
with compiling the binaries using Go 1.7.4.

I now need to go and write some release notes - maybe just a change log? - for
v0.0.2 and some notes on upgrading from v0.0.1. I didn't think there were that
many changes since v0.0.1 but according to Git there are 76 commits so far!

--
Diddymus


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