Suggestion for posting plugins

When posting a plugin here, make sure you "escape" out the characters [, ] and \, otherwise the forum might swallow them. For example, the forum will convert \\ to \.

To do this simply, take your plugin code and paste into a notepad window in MUSHclient.

Then select Convert -> Quote Forum Codes (Shift+Ctrl+Q).

Otherwise, things might look fine, but (for instance) if your code had [b] in it then it would come out in bold, and not be rendered literally.

eg.

a = my_array [b];

Thus, the correct way to post would be:

1. Do the step above, to convert forum codes.
2. Post it inside the tags:

[code]

.... your plugin here ....

[/code]

After a bit of thought... While this method of posting plugins should work for 90% of plugins, some people are likely to be providing ones that use activex or other COM controls, maybe even custom built by them. If they are like me and don't have any online storage location to place them for download, posting the 'plugable' part of the plugin on here is probably not going to be terribly helpful. I think in the long run some sort of method for posting zip archives may be needed.

I can't think of a really easy way to automate that. One problem is I don't run my own web server, that is done by Superb.Net. That way their staff keep it up 24 hours a day, including when I might be away on holidays. They also worry about backups, UPS, DOS attacks etc.

However what that means is I only have a limited number of incoming ftp accounts. I can't think of an easy way of configuring the system to allow each person to upload their own files (but not change/delete other people's) and also to allow for possible abuse by someone who wants to post pirated software.

For now I suggest posting plugins inside messages (I could increase the allowed message size if necessary) and if a COM module or something is required you could email that to me and I will upload that.

Now that plugins are publicly available, you plugin authors might want to start releasing a few.

I can't think of an easy way of giving you access to space on my web server (which I don't directly control), however I suggest one of the following to release them ...

• Just post in a forum posting
• Post on your own server, with a link to it (URL) on this forum
• Email to me and I'll put it into the MUSHclient plugins directory.

The first couple allow you to easily amend your own plugins, however may not be suitable. The last one allows a nice long plugin, but you will need to email changes to me.

Be careful if posting into a forum message, I find with Netscape that it adds leading spaces to each line when I go to copy them from messages. This may or may not matter. If it does, you can base64-encode the plugin (using the built-in notepad) and get the user to decode it before saving. This is only one small additional step.