In "Question about helpfiles" ank wrote:
> one of the pet peeves i have with ROMs is the lack of coherent and consise
> helpfiles, and i definitely don't want mine to be like that. but thank you
> everybody for your advice; i definitely won't try to make any drastic
> changes ...
It's the human aspect that needs work. I use the 'log the not_found' snippet
and it's helped, especially in including common typos as keywords.
Yes, I actually have -1 MAGIC MAGICK MAJIC MOJO~
Make notes as you code, and write the helps as soon as possible lest you
forget details. I always make the Coder/Builder write the help themselves.
Add "See also: " to as many as you can. Like links on the web, looking
at one help should lead you on a journey of learning.
Ideas from my MUSH:
Provide both keyword and body search abilities. With the keyword, return
the first line of the file. (I've made sure the first keyword looks
good alone, so I can truncate the keyword list)
WARRIOR - Warriors live for combat and the thrill of battle. They are the best
CLASSES - Warriors are good fighters, but find magic is difficult.
WARRIOR SKILLS - Common skills chosen by Warriors include the following:
(Notice the stock files DON'T always give a quick summary in the first line.
You'd need to work on that a bit. Big job.)
Use soundex to offer suggestions:
"Sorry, there's no help on 'fame'. Perhaps you meant 'fatal' or 'name'?"
(Notice I always return the input. Helps people realise they typo'd.)
Two of the guys I built MUSHes with just happened to be Library Science
majors. We had filters for "junk words" as they called them. Apparently,
well done search routines will never search for 'the', they'll ask for
something more specific, or drop it out of a phrase.
I also incremented a counter with each hit, and bailed after 20.
"I have found 20 entries in a 37% complete search. Please try again
and be more specific, or use 'allsearch' to show everything found."
(note that 'searchall' got turned around to allow the minimum number
of distinguishing letters; 'alls' as opposed to 'searcha'. Also, if
I entered 'sear foo' to mean 'search food', I can recall it from my
command history, jump to the start with ctrl/left arrow, and just add
'all' as opposed to reaching for the mouse or spacing across to the
middle of the phrase. (Damn, I put way too much work into being lazy!).)
Just some thoughts, as what you start with you'll likely be stuck with.
Definitely pays to plan ahead.
Sandi
"I have not yet begun to code!"
[EMAIL PROTECTED] blades.inetsolve.com 3333
