Pueblo, again.

Okay, now. I'm trying this at FrostFire MUSH--frostfire.kittyfox.net 4201. I don't know how this works on others, but.

Pueblo support is off. I log in. I'm in my room, with an object--my dragon, Corvaith--and two exits, to the Ledge and Tunnel. Everything ordinary.

Log out, turn on Pueblo. Corvaith is now highlighted--with a long streak of the highlight color filling the rest of that line. If I click on his name, I get his desc. Not sure about that block of bright blue, but it works.

The exits, however, both show up as ">Ledge and ">Tunnel. Neither is hyperlinked. When I turn off Pueblo support and turn on my HTML flag, they show up as: <a xch_cmd="Ledge">Ledge</a> and <a xch_cmd="Tunnel">Tunnel</a>

This looks normal to me. So why aren't they showing up as links?

(This has also been checked on my private game. Both are running TinyMUSH 3.0; FF is patchlevel 1, mine is patchlevel 2.)

The links look fine from what you say. Possibly they have a control character inside them or span a newline.

I have tried to connect to FrostFire a number of times myself but cannot get through.

What I suggest you do is go the MXP configuration tab and select "MXP debug level" to "warnings".

This will probably report what the problem is.

Try foxbox.kittyfox.net? That might work... there are sometimes line troubles, too. But, anyway.

E: ( 2317) Unterminated MXP quote: a xch_cmd="Tunnel (got <ESC>)
W: ( 2317) Closing MXP tag </a> does not have corresponding opening tag

That's what I get. But when I look without it on, I see:

Contents:
<a xch_cmd="look Corvaith">Corvaith</a>
Obvious exits:
<a xch_cmd="Ledge">Ledge</a> <a xch_cmd="Tunnel">Tunnel</a>

(And, no, I don't see any control characters or newlines. The exits are both on one line, in my client.)

So obviously, the tags are there right... why isn't it seeing that?

I still can't connect, so try this:

Go to the edit menu and select "Debug packets" (Ctrl+Alt+F11).

Then do a "look".

Then turn "debug packets" off (Ctrl+Alt+F11) again.

This will show exactly what arrived.

However I will guess from the error message that inside the tag:

<a xch_cmd="Tunnel">

You will find an "Escape" character (hex 1B).

MUSHclient doesn't allow ESC or newlines inside a tag itself, otherwise a runaway tag might swallow dozens of lines of output.

Probably the ESC is there to colour the word, but there is no point in colouring the word inside the link (the command) because that simply gets put into the command window.

You also shouldn't get a "long streak of colour".

Go to File -> Global Preferences -> General and make sure that "Bleed background colour to edge" is unchecked.

Okay. For the exits thing, since you said that, I decided to check... and when I turn my ANSI flag off, they work again. But I rather like having my ANSI; some of these games have a fair amount of color. So is there any way to make MUSHclient just ignore those?

And I did turn off the background bleed, which worked. Thanks.

The problem is not that they are using colour, but that they are using it in the wrong place. For example, the ANSI code for "red foreground" is "ESC [31m" where "ESC" means the "escape" character (hex 0x1B).

Now this is fine:


<a xch_cmd="Tunnel">ESC [31m Tunnel</a>


That would make the word "Tunnel" come out in red. Or this:


ESC [31m <a xch_cmd="Tunnel">Tunnel</a>


That might have the same effect, depending on whether you had checked "Use custom link colour".

However this won't work:


<a xch_cmd="Tunnel ESC [31m">Tunnel</a>


That is putting the colouring inside the HTML tag, which doesn't make much sense.

You will need to talk to the implementors and explain that the ANSI codes should not appear inside the tags themselves. MUSHclient has been tested on quite a few other worlds, and this problem has not arisen elsewhere.

Well, see, the thing is, it seems to just be echoing whatever the name of the exit is inside that tag... color and all. I've reported this to the maintainers of TM3, but it'd still be nice if there were some way to just make MUSHclient ignore stuff like that when it got put into a link...

I'm reluctant to change that because it will introduce other problems. Basically it doesn't make sense to put colours inside a tag. It is probably only done in one spot on the server, I would change that. In fact you might want to do what other people have done, and rather than put the name put the dbref, eg.


<a xch_cmd="go #12345">Tunnel</a>


That way, if they click on the link when it is "old" (ie, scrolled back) they won't go in the wrong direction.

Um... are there options for this? I wasn't even aware that those things could be changed, to be honest. They seem rather built in, considering these games were never specifically set up to handle Pueblo in the first place.

Well, it can't be too hard to change, if you have the source code. I couldn't find the source on the other link you gave me, but if I can get my hands on a copy I'm sure I can suggest a change.