MAILGO(6)

💌 MAILGO — the manual, but make it cute

okay bestie, gather round 💖 this is mailgo(6), a page from the Games Manual, and it's about automating email go games with mgt. Yes, go as in the board game. Yes, over email. It's giving 1992 and honestly? Iconic. 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

mailgo — a shell script for using mgt to automate email go games 🦋

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

mailgo [-r] [-n] [-c] [-e] [filename]

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

So basically mailgo helps you manage email games — it processes Smart-Go game records that arrive by mail 📬, invokes mgt, and then automatically sends your next move back. Main character energy fr fr. 👑

When you invoke mailgo with no flags, it searches the specified file for a go game, ignoring mail headers or other such garbage. mailgo will invoke the game processor specified in the environment variable MAILGO — or, if this variable is undefined, it'll try to run mgt from the inherited path. If you give no filename, then mailgo reads its input from stdin, which means you can redirect messages into mailgo directly from your mailer 🫶. That said — your mail program may not support redirecting messages into external programs, so check its man page to find out, bestie. And note: this stdin-as-input option is only valid if you give mailgo no other arguments. (Technical note for the nerds: mgt is instructed to read its input from /dev/tty if you use this feature. 💀)

If your opponent loses your move (rude), you can resend the game with the -r switch.

To start a new game, use the -n switch. Without a file, you'll be prompted for your address, your opponent's address, and the filename for both your and your opponent's local game record. Then the game processor gets invoked so you can make the first move ✨. If a filename is specified, the address and filename data is taken from that file.

The -c switch makes the program delete any extraneous files it might have created during a previous run which was abnormally terminated. Those files have the form: MailGo*

To edit the mailgo headers (including mail addresses, file names and game record format) or the game record itself, use the -e switch with the file name of the mailgo file you wish to edit. The file may be a saved mailgo mail message or a processed mailgo game file. Lowkey important: the -e option will not mail changes, because of the possibility of confusing addresses 🙈. To mail edited files, use mailgo <file> for edited mail messages and mailgo -r <file> for edited files which have been previously processed by mailgo.

mailgo also supports go board sizes of 9x9, 13x13 and 19x19. Handicaps maybe set to values of 2-4 for 9x9 games, 2-5 for 13x13 games and 2-9 for 19x19 games. Any other board size or handicap must be set behind mailgo's back. 😭

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🎀 FILE FORMAT 🎀

 ---GoGaMeStArT---
 TO: opponent@hissite
 TOFILE: his_game_record
 FROM: me@mysite
 FROMFILE: my_game_record
 FORMAT: format_code
 (
 Smart-Go game data
 )
 ---GoGaMeEnD---

 Trailing garbage ignored

The game data file contains a leading tag to indicate the start of the data. It contains both addresses, as should be used to mail the game files, and it contains the files to store the games in. In the example above, you are playing opponent@hissite, and the game is being stored in my_game_record. 💖

The file format used can be either long, short, or extrashort, indicated by L, S, and E respectively. The long format uses the full size Smart-Go file saved with no options from mgt. The extrashort format uses mgt with the -s option to save short format files — but this format may cause problems for some mailers, however, because the lines will grow longer than 512 bytes 😬. In any game record format, if very long comments are created, there is a danger of causing mailer problems. The short format is similar to the extrashort format but has extra newlines inserted. The short format is the default when selecting format from the prompt, but the long format is the default if a file contains no FORMAT line. When mailgo is used normally, the file specified on the command line is removed at successful completion, and the new game is saved to the file specified in the received game record. If the destination file does not look like a mailgo file, mailgo will query for confirmation. 👀

When a new game is started, the first mailgo message contains the line NEWGAME inserted before the FORMAT line. This is used to check for the overwriting of old game records.

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🦋 FILES 🦋

• mgt
• Smart-Go.def, the Smart-Go format definition.

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💀 BUGS 💀

mailgo tries to handle the case where you start a new game but do not make the first move. If after the first move you have a reason to convince mgt that you have changed the game record without really changing anything, you should enter and exit the comment editor. (iykyk 🍓)

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Adrian Mariano (adrian@bsdserver.ucsf.edu)

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🌈 this one's from the Games Manual, dated 23 November 1992 — ancient, but it ate. periodt. 💅✨