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Grex > Coop7 > #135: Changing some party settings |  |
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| Author |
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popcorn
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Changing some party settings
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Dec 8 16:15 UTC 1995 |
Currently in party you have to press the spacebar to talk. To quit, you type
"q". I think it would be helpful to change the defaults so that to talk you
just start typing, and to quit you need to type :q
What do other folks think?
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| 109 responses total. |
popcorn
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response 1 of 109:
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Dec 8 16:40 UTC 1995 |
Also, would it be a good idea or a bad one to change the main party channel
so that people can't read in files? People can show each other pictures in
other channels; that wouldn't change.
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mta
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response 2 of 109:
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Dec 8 18:24 UTC 1995 |
I agree, Valerie. The times I've used party, the spacebar requirement has
driven me to distraction. I much prefer an extra keystroke to quit if the
alternative is endless help scrolling past because I was thinking to fast of
what I wanted to say to remember to press the spacebar first.
From my POV, being able to read in files to the main party channel is not an
advantage.
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ajax
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response 3 of 109:
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Dec 8 23:34 UTC 1995 |
I don't like the space thing, but I'm not a big party user. Maybe
put a note in the party startup message pointing to this discussion?
It seems to me the two changes kind of work against one another.
Blocking file reads just makes it a bit harder to display a file,
as people can still copy/paste or ascii-upload text. However, that
in itself seems a bit harder because of the spaces required at the
start of each line. If you make both changes, you block direct file
imports, but make it easier to display files through other means.
(If I understand things correctly - as said, I'm not a big partier).
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scg
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response 4 of 109:
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Dec 9 03:47 UTC 1995 |
I like having to press space. It often saves me from entering thigs
automatically when I bump the keyboard by accident.
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popcorn
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response 5 of 109:
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Dec 9 06:39 UTC 1995 |
Re 3: I put a note in the party news file at the same time as entering this
item. I'm surprised not to find many regular partiers responding here.
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lilmo
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response 6 of 109:
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Dec 9 06:41 UTC 1995 |
maybe if an attempt to read in a file were to return a reminder to do that
in less-frequented channels?
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popcorn
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response 7 of 109:
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Dec 9 06:46 UTC 1995 |
Well, that's a software change. Just turning the files off is a configuration
change. Configuration changes are much easier than software program changes.
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popcorn
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response 8 of 109:
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Dec 9 06:46 UTC 1995 |
But it does make sense.
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janc
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response 9 of 109:
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Dec 9 07:05 UTC 1995 |
It should be noted that any user can override the default options. I must
have "firstchar" in my PARTYOPTS since it's news to me that that is not
the default.
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carson
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response 10 of 109:
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Dec 9 09:06 UTC 1995 |
I think "spaceonly" was set up before "firstchar" was an option.
BTW, if it hadn't been for that damned bloated .partymsg that I seem to
see every time I bother checking party, I pribly would never have seen
this item. Do I count as a regular partier? :)
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sidhe
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response 11 of 109:
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Dec 10 00:22 UTC 1995 |
Hmmm this is all worth considering. I think that the absence of a
spacebar requirement might work.. but, I think it would be good to
get a feel for these concepts from the partiers before we implement
either of them.
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rlawson
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response 12 of 109:
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Dec 10 15:57 UTC 1995 |
I'm rather partial to having to press space key, and I do use party quite a
bit. I am undecided about not allowing people to read files into party. True,
at times it does get annoying (which is why at those times, :set noshowread).
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popcorn
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response 13 of 109:
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Dec 10 17:26 UTC 1995 |
Re 10: On average, I'd say that message has changed maybe once a month. It
shouldn't be turning up on your screen any more often than that unless your
.partymsg file is regularly eaten by the disk problem.
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carson
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response 14 of 109:
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Dec 10 18:29 UTC 1995 |
(it's pribly more a case of how often I go into party...)
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scg
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response 15 of 109:
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Dec 10 19:05 UTC 1995 |
It's worth pointing out that these things being suggested are defaults that
each user can then change for themselves without affecting everybody else.
I find it really annoying when people read in large ASCII files, but back in
the days before a lot of people had learned to :set noshowread as a means of
avoiding them, I used to read in files for a different purpose. As some of
you have probably noticed, I can be pretty long winded at times, and often
I couldn't fit what I wanted to say within the maximum length of what can be
said at one time in party. If I needed to say something long, I would often
do it by doing a "!cat > temp", saying what I wanted to say, pressing
control-D, and then doing ":r temp". It was kind of nice to have that as a
workaround.
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arthurp
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response 16 of 109:
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Dec 12 08:06 UTC 1995 |
Personally, I don't like the space thing. That is why I searched and
found out how to use firstchar. I suppose the default is fine, but I
think a lot of people don't know how to track down the methods, and
then (gasp) change their login files. The read thing is fine where
it is, I say. When someone starts getting to be a bother, :s .... ;)
My $ .02.
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carson
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response 17 of 109:
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Dec 16 11:52 UTC 1995 |
The nice thing about spaceonly was that if you didn't begin with a space,
you would see the "Type '?' for help" or whatever it says, which would
open your typical newbie to a plethora of wonderous options. I don't
remember what the previous default was... probably something like
hitanykeyexceptfor?,:,or!tobeginyoursentence. Seeing as Grex is dumbing
down in the name of userfriendlyness, I really think that switching to
a firstchar default is a good idea.
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popcorn
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response 18 of 109:
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Jan 11 14:11 UTC 1996 |
Well, I'm going to go ahead and change this, this weekend.
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rlawson
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response 19 of 109:
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Jan 15 05:19 UTC 1996 |
And so you have!
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nephi
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response 20 of 109:
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Jan 15 05:32 UTC 1996 |
Regarding #4: Steve, if you accidentally hit a key and don't want to have
to say something, all you have to do is backspace to the left margin then hit
control-d. That returns you to read mode and doesn't display that annoying
scg:
8^)
By the way, I really like not having to hit that darned spacebar to type
something. I guess this is evidenced by the fact that I have it set in my
.login. 8^) Given that it is totally unnecessary to have to type in the
space, I don't see why it was ever set up that way, anyway.
And about the read option being turned off, I've been in party way too many
times when some twelve-year-old-with-an-attitude decided that he doesn't want
anybody to be able to talk to each other. When Grex had fewer users, such
behavior was easier to mitigate socially, but Grex seems to have become a
regular metropolis where such social mechanisms don't work so well. It's a
shame, too, because I really liked being able to read files into party every
so often.
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nephi
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response 21 of 109:
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Jan 15 05:33 UTC 1996 |
Robert slipped in with #19.
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popcorn
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response 22 of 109:
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Jan 15 06:24 UTC 1996 |
(If I remember right, party was originally set up with the spacebar option
because there wasn't a no-spacebar option.)
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janc
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response 23 of 109:
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Jan 15 08:53 UTC 1996 |
Certain people dislike the changes. I told them to put
PARTYOPTS="nofirstchar spaceonly"; export PARTYOPTS
in their .profiles (both had the /b shell). However they say the settings
aren't showing up in party. The "grabenv" shows that the PARTYOPTS
environment variable was correctly set for both users. Since "grabenv"
takes the environment variable off their current forground process, this
means that "party" had the correct environment variable when the process
started. Why didn't they get loaded into party? I have no idea. PARTYOPTS
work fine for both nephi and me. Neither of us have the /b shell as our
login shell, but I can't imagine what the shell could have to do with it,
since we know the environment variable was correctly set and passwd to party.
This one has me thoroughly stumped.
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janc
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response 24 of 109:
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Jan 15 09:47 UTC 1996 |
Oops, as usual, if you are thoroughly stumped, it is probably because some
of your data is wrong. It wasn't working for nephi and me. PARTYOPTS
weren't working on those options for anyone. That's because the new
options were set in the "chantab", and chantab settings override PARTYOPTS
settings.
It's obnoxious to set these in the "chantab", not only because you can't
override them, but because this means different channels have different modes,
which means you need different typing habits for different channels. These
options belong in the "partytab". It is also possible to set them differently
for "party" and "cafe". However you set them, PARTYOPTS will override them.
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