[MUD-Dev] A new MUD-standard

[Kwon Ekstrom]

----- Original Message -----
From: "J C Lawrence" <claw at kanga.nu>
> Custom is not necessarily better.  You need to define your problem
> *and* its various requirements and so forth before you can properly
> evaluate "better".

Well said J C.

When I approached the problem of a new client standard, the a list of
requirements came to mind.  Following your line of thought, those
requirements are:

  Presentation
  Bandwidth
  Usability
  Learning curve

Which immediately pointed me directly at web technology.  If ansi is a
good medium for a text based mud, isn't html a better one?  And if
html is good, why not just throw in the whole spiel of web
technologies?  Which is why I've been thinking of using NWLayout as a
rendering engine.  I can only imagine how much time and energy it
would take to write an engine with the range of display options of
html.  Instead of defining what it is, you define how it looks, if
that's not good enough, you can use xml with css or xsl to send data
and have it displayed as necessary.

A few people have mentioned how xml was too slow, and I'd like to know
what they were trying to do with it, for a text environ, it'd be
pretty fast imho, but for a graphical environ, you're better off with
a binary protocol, no reason to convert to xml then convert back to
binary, etc...

I suppose this standard would fall into a semi-graphical... since
you'd have some fine control over details of the display, and can send
images (not that I'd recommend this except when necessary) if needed,
but for the most part is text.

I just downloaded a copy of NWLayout again, and I think I'll spend a
little time when I have it on writing that client.  If anyone would
like to help me solve the problems that are sure to come up, please
email me.

-- Kwon Ekstrom

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