Zugg Software :: View topic - Where to save overridden host/port for windows?

Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 8:26 pm

I can't stop thinking about the bug in 1.25 that causes child windows to default to connecting to the MUD server.

What's happening here is that CMUD is saving the No network/Use session network/Override network settings for each window with the *session* rather than with the package file. The bug is that the default is to use the session network connection, so whenever you use a package for the first time in a session, all windows get marked as "use session connection", which isn't the right thing to do.

But the question is where to save this information for each window. If the network connection information is stored in the package file, then it's hard to reuse the same package file for multiple sessions. Packages are supposed to be all about modular functionality, so it doesn't seem the right place to store network connection information. And yet it's the package that knows whether or not a particular window is a "child" window for captures and shouldn't have any network connection.

I've tried it both ways: I've tried saving the network stuff with the package (doesn't work well for multi session support), and I've tried saving it with the session (causes the 1.25 problem of child windows trying to connect to the MUD the first time a package is used). Neither method seems to be correct. So I need another alternative or some sort of combination that will work.

Ideas on this are appreciated. I'd like to fix this in v1.26 in a couple of weeks.

Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 8:35 pm

maybe it could require a bit saved in both locations, then have the two handshake together somehow?

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

First I don't think this should be a PACKAGE setting, I think it should only apply to windows. If you are going to make a connection to a mud you are going to have to have a window to view the results correct? Yet a window doesn't ALWAYS have to have a connection, as you said it could be just there for captures. I think that the session icon should store information about what connection each window has. If the window is saved with a connection then that connection is saved in the session. Because the session knows which packages are loaded it shouldn't be too difficult to do a check and list the connections for any windows in those packages. Otherwise it defaults to none.

The problems I saw were that we were practically unable to write to a window that didn't have a connection and that windows that shouldn't have had a connection were TRYING to make one.

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 3:24 pm

I say with the package.

If it's saved in the package, it might be hard to reuse - but presumably the window is intended to be connected to a certain MUD (or not connected at all, see below) and that's what the settings inside the window are for. You more than likely wouldn't intend a setup that specific to be reused in situations where that window wasn't connected to a certain MUD. If that were to change in a system where the connections are saved with the session, you'd have to change the settings anyway.

EDIT: I thought I'd better expand on this. If someone's going to have two windows open to the different MUDs, they're very unlikely to use a single session to do that - they'll use more than one session. In situations where someone has another window connected to a different IP, they're probably using it for something very specific and the settings they had would be relating to that specific MUD. There wouldn't be any scope for reusing them other than with that MUD.

If it's saved with the session, you get the problem that people have been having where windows won't connect the first time they're used. The main time people see this is when they Save Session As - wouldn't it be possible to compile a list of windows and their connections from the sessions that are loaded when the new session is created?

Finally, I think the default should be No Connection rather than Use Default. I think that windows with no connection, for echoing and whatnot, are used much more often than multiple windows connected to the same MUD in the same session. If that were going to be the case, they'd just use two separate sessions.

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 7:34 pm

I say with the session. While it may be a little annoying, it only occurs the first time so that is easier to live with I think. It's apparent to me that a lot of folks multi-play and it seems like the lesser of the two evils.