Books

Winter's Edge has implemented coded Books, designed to be reasonably easy to use, and function similarly to books in the real world. These coded objects are based loosely on the Book Code at http://alumni.imsa.edu/~kamikaze/mush/ and the staff here is grateful to Jonathan (Kamikaze) for making his PennMUSH-based code available to be looked at. As in the code stored on that site, editting and hilighting remains unavailable. Books may only be read while you are carrying them, and will return to their homes when you disconnect or drop them. This is not meant to dissuage people from reading them, but simply to make sure we don't lose them.

The following help files are available for books: Chapters           Close               Length Reading            Table of Contents   Writing

To reference these, type '+help books ' in your mush client.

Chapters
In general, books are divided up into chapters. It's a simple and convenient system we're all familiar with. These are the commands that deal with that simple and effective organizational system:

+toc                    - Lists the Table of Contents, showing chapter page numbers and titles if applicable.

+chapter <#>            - Turns to the beginning of the selected chapter.

+newchapter             - Allows a book's owner/author to designate the next page as the beginning of a new chapter.

+chaptertitle <#>= - Allows a book's owner/author to set the title of a chapter.

Close
This command closes the book, returning its 'current page' to the front cover. Note that dropping the book or disconnecting will also achieve the same result.

Syntax: +close

Length
This command is used by staff or the owner/author of a book to pre-establish the book's maximum length. Useful for keeping yourself from rambling, perhaps...

Syntax: +length <# of pages>

Reading
While carrying a book, simply looking at it (l ) is sufficient to review the current page. However, the following commands can be used to get additional information from the book, and/or make things a little easier:

+page <#>               - Turns to a specific page.

+chapter <#>            - Turns to the first page of a specific chapter.

+read                   - Reads the current page, and automatically turns the page. This way the next 'look' or                                   '+read' will display the next page.

+toc                    - Lists the Table of Contents, showing chapter page numbers and titles if applicable.

Table of Contents
Barring an exhaustive index (and I assure you, coding up index code flexible for any books and comprehensive enough to be useful would, indeed, be exhaustive), the Table of Contents is the quickest way to find what you're looking for in any book that has one. So, we provide a way to check that handy reference:

Syntax: +toc

Writing
The ability to enter data into a book to record and store that information is the single most important piece of what books are all about. Thus, these commands get their own section. Keep in mind, these commands are staff/owner-only:

+cover           - Allows the book's owner/author to establish the description of the book's cover.

+title          - Allows a book's owner/author to assign the title of the book.

+newchapter             - Allows a book's owner/author to designate the next page as the beginning of a new chapter.

+chaptertitle <#>= - Allow's a book's owner/authoer to set the title of a chapter.

And, of course, these two:

+preview         - Allows the book's owner/author to see text as it will be entered without actually entering it. This allows for editting and corrections, and any error messages in the displayed preview appear exactly as they would in the entered text.

+write           - Allows the book's owner/author to enter text into the next available page.

NOTE: Given formatting, attribute, and display limitations, it is suggested you keep individual pages under 7,000 characters in length (the commands will warn about 7,500, but 7,000 gives you a bit more wiggle room).