http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=310841

I spent several hours piecing together a telnet client for the chatterbox. When you first connect, you will initially be known as 'AnonyMonk', which (obviously) has restricted use. As AnonyMonk, you may watch the public chatterbox content scroll by. If you so desire, you may authenticate yourself to gain additional functionality. After a successfull authentication, any text entered that does not begin with a colon (':') will be taken to be text to send to the chatterbox as is (so typing "foobar" will send "foobar" to the public chatterbox, while "/msg foo bar" will send the text "bar" to user "foo"). Note that in public chatterbox mode (the default mode upon logging in), all commands are prepeded with a colon (':') to differentiate them from text meant to be sent directly to the chatterbox.

Upon authentication, you also gain access to the 'inbox mode'. Typing ':inbox' will detach you from the public chatterbox mode and enter you into a mode where you can read, reply to, delete and archive private messages. I kept the inbox mode as simple as I could think to keep it. It provides you with a list of users who's message(s) you have in your Message Inbox (archived messages excluded for a very good reason, along with the message count for each user. You select one user at a time and their messages are presented one at a time. After a message is presented, valid options are "reply", "save", "archive", or "delete". All changes (deleting and/or archiving) you make are not immediately made (makes things faster as well as keeping hit load to perlmonks.org lower). When you 'exit/quit' the inbox mode, you will be asked if you want to make the changes permanent.

This telnet chatterbox client comes with color! Usernames are colored cyan, chatterbox actions ("/me"'s) are colored green, and <code> blocks are posted with a blue background (to highlight them). Also, text wrapping is done on 79 characters to make for bearable reading :)

So now, the only piece of information I haven't mentioned yet. Where to connect to use the telnet cb client! telnet perlmonk.org 8040 is the place to go. Be aware that windows telnet does not work with this script beyond anonymous chatterbox viewing (it randomly strips characters out of strings passed to the server, so even getting an ':auth' command through is a miracle).

Send comments, suggestions and/or hate mail to '/msg Coruscate' or to the email address listed on the third line when you connect to the telnet cb client.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: telnet cb client
by allolex (Curate) on Nov 29, 2003 at 09:31 UTC

    I successfully logged in to the client and it seems pretty nice. I would like to see it under a bit more load because that is where im2 tends to suffer a bit. (That might also be a place to look for some cool features to add, such as new post announcements, etc.)

    It might improve the overall interface if you found some way of visually distinguishing the CB output lines from the client input lines; the shell-esque '$' isn't quite enough, IMO. I'll check the client out under more busy circumstances and get back to you. Very clean work!

    --
    Allolex

      It might improve the overall interface if you found some way of visually distinguishing the CB output lines from the client input lines

      It seems to me that colour would be a good way to do that. Just add one more color for input.

      And yes, having the new node announcements like im2 would be nifty. im2 is great, except when it goes down sometimes.


      $;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}} split//,".rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ";$\=$ ;->();print$/