Chapter 2 - Option Sets

The option set dialog is one of the more complex Genius forms. It is split horizontally into three sections. The first section consists of the option set selector and two buttons to add and delete option sets. The middle section contains a tab control with five tabs, labeled Display, Telnet, Triggers, Macros and General. The third and last section contains only three buttons labeled Cancel, Apply and OK.

Managing Option Sets

The first section of the option form allows you to select the option set you wish to edit. Please note that you may change the current option set of the selected terminal window by choosing a different entry from the drop list combox, then click on the Apply or OK button. However, this will only temporarely change the option set for the current session and not assign the option set to the account.

When you have selected the option set you wish to modify, you may change settings in the middle section by walking though all the tabs and adjusting the controls in each tab. When you are done, hit Apply or OK to go with the changes, or Cancel to discard them. If you want to get rid of the selected option set, click the Delete button in the upper section. If you want to add a new set, click the Add Set button.

The Display Tab

As you can see in the figure above, the Display tab contains loads of options to configure the appearance of the selected option set.

The Background panel can be clicked to bring up a color selection dialog. That way you can set the background color of the terminal, in case you are not happy with black.

The Font button can be clicked to bring up a font selector, so you can choose any font on your system, and change the attributes like typeface, color, size and more. Please note that Genius can handle non-fixed-width fonts, however, text selection and word wrapping will only work properly with a fixed-width font. Examples for fixed-width fonts included in every windows distribution are FIXEDSYS, TERMINAL and COURIER.

The panel for bright text determines the text color if an ANSI BOLD code is sent after an ANSI OFF. Color selection works the same way as with the background color.

The ANSI checkbox determines if the terminal will interprete ANSI codes. If you uncheck this box, the ANSI mapping panel on the right hand side will be hidden.

Although Genius provides keyboard shortcuts to move through the scrollback buffer, some people still prefer a scroll bar on the right hand side of the terminal. I think it only eats up valuable space, so I usually turn it off in all my option sets by unchecking the Scroll Bar checkbox.

The last checkbox on this tab will toggle the terminal's Local Echo. You will have to disable local echo if your server already echoes your commands. Otherwise you'll see everything twice. Please note that Genius currently always sends commands on a per-line basis. It is currently unable to send character by character.

The Margin Size determines how many spaces will be added to each line output to the terminal. This can be useful if you don't like if text glueing to the left border of the terminal window.

The ANSI mapping panel allows you to redefine the ANSI colors displayed in the terminal. The first column of colored panels shows the dark default ANSI colors, the third column shows the bright default ANSI colors. The larger panels to the right of the first and third column show your current color settings. If you click one of the default color panels, the mapped color will be reset to the default value. If you click one of the larger color panels, a color selection dialog will pop up and you can select the new color. If you want to see the effect of your changes, click the Apply button whenever you have changed a color.

The Telnet Tab

The telnet tab contains all settings related to telnet commands. Telnet is a very old internet protocol that was developped for client to host as well as host to host communication. It supports many, many options, some do not make much sense for a client with a scrollback buffer, but I'll still try to implement as many options as possible in the near future.

Currently, you can decide to enable or disable telnet. If you decide to enable it, you can determine if Genius will try to initiate the negotiation by itself. This might cause problems with servers that do not speak telnet, so make sure to disable this option if you can't log in to a server.

The only option that is currently active is the Communicate Window Size option, simply called NAWS. If NAWS is enabled, Genius will tell the server about your new terminal size every time you resize the terminal window. If the server is smart enough to handle NAWS, it will adjust the text it sends to you to fit the new terminal size.

The Triggers Tab

Triggers can be quite useful. For example, you can play an audio file whenever someone logs on, or you can implement a PING/PONG sequence like shown above. If several people have set up PING/PONG, you can ping other people and find out if the connection is lagging.

Setting up triggers is quite easy. Click Add Trigger to add a new event. Then, enter the trigger string which Genius shall listen for in incoming text. Please note that the trigger string is case sensitive.

Then, tick the actions you want Genius to take if the trigger is triggered. You can send text to the server, play a sound file, or both of it. To select a sound file, click the Browse button and locate the file.

If you want to delete a trigger, just select it from the drop list combox, then click the Delete button.

If you want to disable a trigger, uncheck both actions.

The Macros Tab

Macros are a great tool for repetitive tasks. A macro is invoked with a shortcut, and it will send one or several lines to the server. Currently, Genius offers keys 1 though 9 for use with macros, which allows you to set up 9 different macros maximum.

To set up or modify a macro, simply select the desired shortcut from the list and edit the text in the memo.

The Aliases Tab

Aliases are basicly macros that are not executed by a keyboard shortcut, but by a command typed on the command line. The command line parameters are accessible from within the translation through a set of predefined parameters. The parameter delimiters are the same as for macros and can be adjusted on the General tab (see below).

Command line Parameters

• Each individual command parameter may be accessed through its number. Examples (with standard parameter delimiters): [1] [2] [3] etc.
• The complete command parameter list may be accessed through the ALL parameter.

Alias Examples

The General Tab

The command history size is currently meaningless.

The command separator may be used on the command line to separate mutliple commands and send them in one go. If you don't like the default, change it here.

Whenever Genius detects the path character at the beginning of a command, it will interpret all following characters as directions and send them as separate commands. Clear the path character edit field to disable path detection.

If you paste text into Genius, it will insert the prefix in front of each line to be pasted, and the suffix after each line. The standard paste settings are be used when you paste text with Ctrl+V, and the alternative paste settings are used when you paste text into the command line with Ctrl+Shift+V.

In the figure above, the dot (note: there's a space after the dot) in the Prefix will result in a separate SAY for each pasted line, as the dot is an alias for SAY on the Village Green. However, the <BR> tag in the alternative paste prefix will force a line break in front of each pasted line.

The macro parameter delimiters define what characters Genius should consider the beginning and end of a parameter when it parses macros and aliases. Keep the default values as long as there are no complications.