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MUD Shell
TGandalf writes "MUD Shell is a shell for end users- as easy to use as a MUD or a text adventure game. View an example session and download the source (16KB). It translates your filing system into a map, so cd.. becomes gonorth or simply n. File copying via the shell involves moving to one location, taking objects, then moving to another location to drop them. We got the idea from reading a thread on SlashDot." Allright I can't imagine actually using this, but I gotta give props. Very clever.
Isn't this just like the Adventure Shell, which has been around for a long time? Seems pretty MSInnovative to me.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
User: I need to access this directory share on the network.
sysadmin: You must first defeat my evil minions! Muhahaha!!!!
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
Might be worth a look-into -- the bash version claims to be "ca 1984".
Yes, except for where /etc/init.d/ is itself a symlink to /etc/rc.d/init.d/, of course.
--
The most valuable commodity I know of is information. - Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, Wall Street
Who says open source doesn't innovate? ;-)
(* it's just a joke!)
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Gives a new meaning to drag'n drop...or perhaps, dragon drop.
I never saw the movie, but in the book there is a virtual-reality filing system that you walk through, open drawers, etc. Sounds like this shell is the first step. - JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
goto / /. There are exits in the usr, etc, root and home directions. Vmlinuz and core are in the room.
...
You enter
look You see vmlinuz and core.
look at core
Core is a large fellow and looks to be very old.
> kill core The gods prevent you from acting.
> cast 'sudo' kill core
You *massacre* the core.
> look at core
The core looks pretty hurt.
You *obliviate* the core.
You kill the core dead! RIP!!!
> cons vmlinuz
Are you mad!?!?
-- Good judgement comes with experience. -- Experience comes with bad judgement.
Ridiculous. Easy-of-use and streamlined are at opposite ends of the usage spectrum. There have been forces pulling in both directions at every stage of development.
Why aren't we manually settings registers by flipping switches? Wasn't the punchcard horrible real world stuff? You had to design your program, punch it out, then feed it into the computer to compile it. So why would anyone do that? Because it sure beat having to feed your program in flawlessly character by character flipping switches.
The "desktop" analogy that modern GUIs use is an extension of this same "hard work". You have to click the file. You have to drag the file. You have to drop the file. So why would anyone do that? Because it sure beats having to learn the command syntax for copy.
I think you couldn't be further off base when you clame the appeal of computers is that you can create streamline environments. The appeal of computers is that they abstract large amounts of menial tasks so all we need to be concerned about is higher-level thinking skills.
The real world is hardly a "horrible" place to get work done. Which is more efficient?
A) Having ten people watching indicators so they can push a button when the state changes or
B) Having a computer watching indicators and pushing buttons when the state changes
Well the answer would seem to be B, but it begs the questions, who tells the computer what to do? It's rather simple to tell ten people (even high-school dropouts) to watch this light and push that button if it goes red. It's rather difficult to have one of them built a proper indicator/computer interface and the software with logic to do the same task.
Now of course you can hire someone with the expertise to do it, but then we've just proven my point.
If a person can understand a command line interface, it makes sense that they would and should use that since it is the most efficient.
If a person can't understand a command line interface but can understand a graphical user interface, it makes sense for them to use that.
If a person can't understand even a graphical user interface (and there are plenty of people who have still no idea how to work a mouse) then I say it makes perfect sense for them to use a virtualize world interface because that's the lowest common denominator.
You seem to think people should rise to the challenge of the most efficient system. That's an ideal. Have you ever been in a real company? How many geeks are there? The majority of the people hired by companies are hired for business/legal/etc skills. So should a company exclude them because they don't have the ability to learn/use a "superior" interface? Please tell me where to find a CFO that's also a UNIX guru.
At a company I worked at, once of the VPs didn't even have a computer. Why did they hire him? Because he was a financial wizard and made a lot of money. So if he needed information from a computer system, he used a "horrible real world" interface called the administrative assistance. He would tell her what information he wanted and she would get it and print it out for him. It was more efficient for the company to hire a secretary to do the work than to have him spend his time learning how to do it himself.
Oh, and once last thing..."hardcopy doesn't even let you copy/paste!" Absurd! Where do you think we got the terms from? From people cutting sections of documents up, pasting them together and then photocopying to form the final document. Is it efficient? Probably not, but it's something even my grandmother knows how to do.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
When the computer is infected by a virus does that mean I got bit by chiggers and have to go find the mud?
Life is an Adventure.
...its name is MUD.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Or maybe it could be that people just want to do things in new and unusual ways, just to say they can.
Stop reading so much into these articles, you're quite on the virge of trolling.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
> enter /etc
>look
[listing deleted for brevity]
>look at smb.conf
smb.conf looks interesting. You might be able to write to it and delete it. You definitely cannot execute it
> wield SwordOfDeletion
> attack smb.conf
You hit smb.conf hard.
smb.conf savages you with a death spell.
You feel weak.
You run away to /
> say "shit, forgot to su"
MUDs may be easy to use after you've learned one (because the interface is very similar). However, one still has that initial learning curve. Granted, a MUD has a bit more intuitiveness than your average bash shell, but still. Bash is far more efficient for most tasks, after that initial curve is overcome. I think it's more useful to show a newbie how to do things in a windowed-manager, and when they get comfortable with the concept of a file system with directories (folders), subdirectories, filetypes, extensions, etc. then introduce them to the shell. Learning to get around in a window manager greatly increases overall knowledge of how the filesystem is set up (regardless of OS), which is a prerequisite for using a shell prompt effectively.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
> enter /etc
/etc
>look
[listing deleted for brevity]
>look at smb.conf
smb.conf looks interesting. You might be able to write to it. You definitely cannot execute it.
> wield SwordOfDeletion
> attack smb.conf
You hit smb.conf hard.
smb.conf savages you with a death spell.
You feel weak. You are near death.
You run away to /
> say "shit!"
You say "shit".
/boot looks are you strangely.
> cast SuperUser
> password: *******
> drink healing potion
> enter
> attack smb.conf
You kill smb.conf with a single blow.
> Say "Thats more like it"
You say "Thats more like it"
/init.d applauds loudly.
Does anyone know of a shell that's been ported to Windows 2000? Or if not an entire shell, just the command-line tools would make me happy.
Why not look here, for a whole range of GNU software running on Windows..
Steve
---
I remember writing such a shell in a moment of boredom around 10 years ago with some equally sad, mud-obsessed mates.
:)
We had is set up so you could 'unlock' the door to your 'house' and let others inside. Each directory had a both a long and a short description which you could view. Files were objects (or objects were files!) and you could move them around...... you also had an object that moved with you so that you could see someone if their current working directory was the same as yours. 'Talking' to them sent them a screen message etc etc.
Was great fun - I guess I should pull out the source from somewhere
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
My implementation philosophy is slightly different however. I had as an original demand that it shouldn't change your prefered working environment except by adding things, i.e., it shouldn't break any of the things in your shell that work now. It's written in perl and primarily uses bash shell functions. It currently has: .room_description files in the actual directories. "Use" uses the file command to deduce file type from header and mdsh has its own simple-to-modify magic file that associates file types with application (can have several console and X alternatives for each file type).
go [north/n/dir]
take/drop [object/regexp]
inventory
examine [file/dir/person]
use [object]
It supports local and global "skins" for your filesystem (that is, room description files) as well as
When you enter a directory it diplays a room description if there is one, the number of files in the directory and the "exits" (directories)avilable, and also any other users in this directory. "Examine" works for all displayed objects (using the passwd file for users in your dir).
Problems with my current version is that it is bash specific and mutli-user functionality is limited to seeing who else is in you cwd. I'm working on a new version that will take care of these issues and make command line chat etc possible.
This application must be classified as a Bad Idea(tm) along the lines of Doom for sysadmins. It also has several predecessors, like ash and one adventure shell written originally for the VAX in the early 80's. If there is any interest I could probably put my code up somewhere. Email me at henning@roxen.com.
Here it is. http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.cs.unm.ed u/~dlchao/flake/doom/+doom+shell&hl=en
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
You are in the evil MS forest. There is a trail which goes east and west. You hear noises coming from the north.
system.dat is standing here
H 400(400) V 82(82) > hit system.dat
You knock the @#$$ out of system.dat which causes a BSOD
system.dat is dead!
You receive 2 experience points for participation.
The battle so far has lasted 1 round.
You laugh at the sound of the pc speaker's scream
H 400(400) V 82(82) > yay!
For example, the Super Nintendo classic, Metroid.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
>cast top
You see a mail daemon here
You see a http daemon here
You see a ftp daemon here
>yell Help, demons!
You yell, "Help, demons!"
>attack http daemon
You easily slay the http daemon
|<00|_/-\|)/\/\1|/| yells, "Some lamer just crashed our Web server, d00dz!"
check out the header of this shell:
#!/usr/bin/perl
#MUD Shell
#(C)2001 Dean "Gandalf" Swift and Xirium
#
#20010209 Gandalf: idea taken from comments on SlashDot.Org
#20010210 Gandalf: start
Hmmm... ok... but which comment was he inspired by?
My guess is comment #46 from this archived story
any other guesses?
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
"Damn these kids and their fancy-pants text streams!!! GRRR!!!! Back in my day we leeched bandwidth by CARRIER PIGEON YA LAZY GOOD FER NUTHINS!!!"
This sig is xenon coated, and will glow red when in the presence of aliens
Back in the 80s, I'd use DOS and play Infocom games constantly. Whenever I lost my train of thought, I'd do either L or DIR absentmindedly, just to get me restarted.
Of course, half the time, I'd get I don't know the word 'dir.' and the other half I'd get Bad command or filename: L.
Got so bad I made an L.BAT which did a DIR, which helped a little. :)
[
You find yourself surrounded by a mysterious blue cloud. You are unable to move.
That would take a bit of adjustment for me. I've always thought of .. as west!
> It would be nice to carry files around with you
This is something I rather like about windows explorer: you can cut and paste files, which is rather like the "get" and "drop" commands I wrote a long way back when i was learning unix. never went so far as to make it a whole shell though.
zope manages resources the same way, though it's mostly because that's just about the only way to move files around in most web interfaces.
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
FSN is not fake, it actually looks just like what you saw in the movie. I think the Jurassic Park people added the sound effects, but the real FSN actually let you fly around a graphical representation of your filesystem, fly into subdirs by clicking on them, launch apps, etc.
Aren't you the one who was salivating over the prospect of a 3-d interface the other day?
(I was too, but I'm not dissing it today)
Yes, I think that most geek social maladaptivia can be directly traced to an encompassing fear of the grues and evil wizards that lie outside the safety of the computer room.
How about this: Geeks couldn't care less. Geeks are happy with the command line. It's for the benefit of everyone else that we have cute little folder icons and trash-cans and clickable buttons that look like old-tyme radios.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
I agree with your point. The added level of mapping directories to directions is not that interesting. However, I think some MUD features would really work on a unix shell.
The one I would like most is being able to interact with other users on the system. For example, movement: someone cd's to your home directory; you see something like "jdoe enters from /home/jdoe." If you cd to jdoe's home directory, you see "You see jdoe here." Chat: "jdoe says: what's up." Emotes: "jdoe smiles happily," and so on.
It would take extending an existing shell a bit and add some way to keep global state. Not too bad.
~Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
I think that efforts like this could help the indoctrinated user become more comfortable with a command line interface. It gives a very easily visualized representation of the file system which is actually more logical than the folder analogy commonly used. Once the user realizes that the folders they are used to using are simply an abstraction, they are ready to start learning a full-fledged command line interface, at least for file management. Of course there will always be a use for the GUI, but as anyone who has worked tech support can tell you, the GUI lets people be stupid, and then they don't know how to solve even the most rudimentary problems, because they don't understand that it is only an abstraction. If stuff like this makes the users a bit more aware of HOW the computer works, I'm all for it. Then we can get to work on juicier stuff, like not leaving the Administrator password blank.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
The last MUD shell I downloaded from a 1337 warez site had "xyzzy" linked to "rm -rf".
Read the rest of this comment...
look
There is a / here.
get /
put / in /
I used "ash", the Adventure Shell, six years ago or so. This is just a retread. (Although given ash's lack of maintenance, possibly a needed one.)
MUDShell doesn't really do that, unless the newbies happen to have experience with Adventure style games. Otherwise, a lot of the humor and some of the "logic" of the shell would be lost on the newbie.
MUDShell is probably more entertaining for oldtimers than useful to new users. Nothing wrong with that.
Might it not be because computers are complex systems and we therefore need to impose a level of abstraction? You will note that we already have many levels of abstraction between us and the computer, or we'd all be programing using hex editors today.
Metaphors existed long before we came along as a way for people to clutch at the intangable and shape it to a concrete shape that is familar to them.
You might as well say that poets are driven by an obession with emotion and thoughts that they wish to merge external reality with them.
Now most geeks have no problems envisioning abstract concepts (at least as regards the inside of their computer). However, increasingly concrete layers of obstraction in the user interface does make it easier for users. To me this seems like the text based version of the graphics user interface.
Personal, I'll probably always perfer bash to ethier of them, all things being equal, but given some development time I can see this more concrete text based user interface might be very useful to less experienced users in situations where bandwidth counterindicates the use of a GUI.
--
Remove the rocks to send email
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
The story is not about filesystems. It's about user interface.
The question is why do Geeks like computers more than non-geeks?
Perhaps it's because they see something in computers that the non-geeks missed. If you're a programmer then you can show the rest of the world what you see by building different interfaces.
This is an excellent start, as most starts are. Obvious improvements would be to code it in a less interpretive language, and to add local directory features to provide the room description. For all I know, this might be an option already, I only scanned the source briefly.
some of the issues mentioned in the original thread, such as concepts such as "file I edited yesterday" would be useful and interesting, or maybe just interesting, or maybe just cool.
Anyways, cool idea, and cool project, good luck.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
maybe this too will grow into a graphical version of this. 'What?' Thats what GUI's are. Well, thats what GUI's were meant to be... and actually started out as that. Now, they are just the icons and multiple windows, with some limited funtions for each widget and icon (file). What ever happened to treating programs as objects, individual files being transparent to the user (until you wanted to actually get into them) and a true graphical method for manipulating your ENVIRONMENT. Well, maybe later this will grow into and merge with the 3D GUI under dev right now
Give it a graphical front end and blam! Instant VR filesystem. With actual usability, no less.
-carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
Wonderful! Cool! Amazing! I think, anyway :)
:)
So, the next thing we'll have is a tinyfugue plug in so it'll draw maps for you, then a graphical front end so you're wandering around filesystems as if they were buildings and rooms in a VR environment, killing off rogue processes with your trusty sword of SIGTERM.
"Hey! You can't kill me, I'm nice -20!"
Or... we just get the interactive, multi-player plug in for SGI's VR filesystem viewer
Well, something from someone who posted the initial idea. I don't know where to begin, but this is great. I just submitted me to the project (without even trying the sourcecode).
It would be nice to carry files around with you (with maximum weight of course).
Really, I never expected this, it was just a "general" idea. I played with it after I posted it and got so many positive replies, but I was already planning another new program (something around Icecast and voting). Now I have to stop thinking about that thing, and help implement the real adventure-shell!
People, this project needs some hard work!
This is a replacement signature.
Why do geeks do this? I would hazard that it is because they are so incredibally obsessed with the innards of their penises, that they desire to merge my vagina with it, to create a symbiosis of the external tangible world and the internal world of "software".
One can see this motivation in Virtual Porn and oral sex, artificial life and inflatable dolls. A fascination with nonreal copulations can enegender loneliness. What better way to escape this loneliness by fucking everything and everyone! Especially me, since I'm such a huge whore!
Through this sexual experience, geeks can become better adapted to the whores.
I had sex with a camel!
"You might get eaten by a core ^h^h^h^h grue."
Heh.