Hi All,

I am having great difficulty in adjusting help files or books. I am currently using Zmud and was wondering if folks have recommendations about how best to go about updating helps using copy and paste if possible. I find that copy and paste often removes spacing etc.

Either use the editor function in zmud or turn off aliases and triggers and copy and paste on the command line.

Somewhere, in a similar thread to yours, there is an excellent explanation of why things don't work in ZMUD et al - something to do with rapture line widths.

Personally, my quick and easy solution is this - do what I do: log into nexus every time you want to write a post, adjust a ghelp or write a book, and use the nexus editor - which is brilliant... and log back into zmud afterwards.

I got tired of switching to java whenever I wanted to do something like this as I did it quite frequently. Ultimately I ended up making friends with the editor commands like *line and *insertline and I was able to do all the editing I wanted, which included ASCII art just for fun once, with minimal effort and no hassle of logging in and out all the time.

I write many files and many books using zmud. It isn't hard or impossible and takes about 2 seconds if you already have the information written.

Only put in line breaks where there is actually a break. Don't try to guess the width. The in-game editor will break up your text for you at the appropriate spots. So just type it out normally and paste it in the editor or the command line (after turning off the aliases and triggers). Works like a charm.

Does that really work? Sweet...

Nexus has the other wonderful advantage of course, that you won't forget to turn off your zmud aliases etc. There is nothing more embarrassing than making a post in which half the salient words are substituted by phrases like "apply mending to head" or "outr pennyroyal;eat pennyroyal".

You can also log in from zMud to Nexus and from Nexus to zMud while being logged in on the other. You will get automatically kicked from the one you where in at that time and still retain all defs. I usually do it like that, for the editor from Nexus.

Use a text editor to edit your file beforehand. Then it's child's play to make an alias that starts the editor, does *clear and yes, then uses #SEND to send the text file. No need to remember to turn parsing on and off, and it's perfect every time, with only a single alias to type. Downside: if the only chnage is one line in a long file, this approach clears it and sends it all from scratch, which takes longer. But that's a rare enough situation.

I write all my posts in Notepad. I then go into News, section to the appropriate place, and click the little computer icon in the bottom right-hand corner (it's also a good idea to turn off triggers). Then, after copying from notepad, hit ctrl-v, enter. Done. All the lines are auto-formatted, my spaces between lines remain (zMud removes them if you don't turn off parsing, that little computer icon), aliases aren't called, triggers aren't called. Looks all pretty-like.

One gotcha with disabling parsing and triggers: it still leaves any alarms enabled.
If you have any alarms that happen to go off while you are editing, you will have their contents thrown into the post/book.
This is a negligible risk if you paste your post in, or use a script to send the text instantly, but it is still worth noting.

I edited a LOT of those scrolls. What I do is find out how many characters I can insert before the thing linebreaks for me, and then make a line of ='s that long. I pretty much use that as a guide and then just maket he linebreaks myself. That way, I can see what the thing looks like without having it look like one ginormous line. It also lets me put in pretty pictures (well, not me. some person made a cool one though that;s now slapped at the top of every Celestine GHELP file though.)

Oh, and I do everything on Notepad.

I use a text editor (Scintilla) to edit help scroll files. One newline at the end of each paragraph, no wrapping at 72 characters or anything like that. Use *clear, as Gwylifar said, and then "Actions -> Send file to MUD..." for uploading the text line by line. No parsing issues. No trigger issues. Perfect wrapping every time.

Drathys, get a grip on those timers! Why would you be randomly sending commands to the game unless you told your script to actively repeat some process? Heh.

I was using persistent alarms at one stage as a backup for my curing, while I was ironing out issues with my prompt curing. I also had one at one stage to grab my score at regular intervals to update my UI.
I've since got rid of all the persistent alarms anyway.

I just thought it was worth mentioning, because it caught me out a few times in the past.

Fair enough.