POWWOW(6)

💖 POWWOW 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because we're about to talk about powwow, and she's living in the Games Manual section of your man pages. this is a whole sixth section girly. iykyk. 🌸

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✨ NAME ✨

powwow — a telnet protocol client for MUD playing. that's the whole vibe. no cap. 🎀

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

powwow [ host port ] | [ definition-file ]

like, pick one, bestie. it's giving either/or. 💅

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🌈 DESCRIPTION 🌈

so powwow is a client program that implements the telnet protocol, and honestly? she adds some bells and whistles to the standard telnet(1) communication utility. her main character energy is aimed at playing multi-user games like MUDs (Multi User Dungeons). 🐉✨

here's the tea on how you launch her:

• you can invoke powwow with host and port — and then she does not save any definitions. like, zero. she's just passing through. 🙈
• or you can invoke her with a definition-file, which is supposed to contain various definitions plus the name of the host and the port number.

and if that definition-file doesn't exist? not a problem, bestie. the user gets prompted for the host name and port number, and those get saved in the new file. 💾 the definition file can be edited with any text editor, and it gets updated whenever a definition (action, alias, etc.) is changed. so she's always keeping herself cute and current. ✨

if the environment variable POWWOWDIR is defined, powwow will look there first for definition files — and create new ones there too. so she's got a home base. 🏠

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lines that begin with # are assumed to be special commands to be processed locally. help is available with the #help command. there's also a more detailed manual somewhere. 👀 notably, semicolons separate commands on a single line. and if you want to send a literal semicolon, you prefix it with a backslash. \; — that's the move. 🫶

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powwow also supports the MUME editing protocol for editing texts locally. the name of the editor is taken from the environment variable POWWOWEDITOR or EDITOR. emacs(1) is used by default. for text viewing, POWWOWPAGER is searched, then PAGER, and more(1) is used by default. 📖

if the first character of the editor is & (which is then skipped, so don't worry about it), the editor is assumed to run in another window — and powwow will run concurrently with the editor without waiting for it to finish. multitasking queen. 👑

when launched, the editor program will have its TITLE environment variable set to the document title sent from the MUD. little details, she's got them. 💖

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Massimiliano Ghilardi <max@Linuz.sns.it> and Gustav Hållberg are the people that added many new features to an existing client, Cancan, and transformed it into powwow. iconic behaviour honestly. ✨

Mattias Engdegård (f91-men@nada.kth.se) was the original author of Cancan — but many other people have contributed at least as much, including:

• Finn Arne Gangstad (finnag@pvv.unit.no)
• David Gay (dgay@di.epfl.ch)
• Gary Dezern (gdezern@satelnet.org)
• Lai-Chang Woo (vivriel@scs.com.sg)

the whole friend group showed up for this one. 🫶

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powwow moved to hoopajoo.net in 2005, and is now maintained by Steve Slaven <bpk@hoopajoo.net>. please send bug reports and patches to that address. she's listening, bestie. 📬

the powwow WWW page is: http://hoopajoo.net/projects/powwow.html 🌐

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powwow was originally inspired by Peter Unold's Tintin client, but now only bears a very remote resemblance to the original. glow-up of the century. 🦋✨

she aims to be a simple but very interactive client, and contains features that are interesting for ``immortal'' players, in particular on MUME — though honestly any mud player should benefit from powwow as well. she's for everyone. periodt. 💅

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🎀 FILES 🎀

• powwow — the binary. the girl herself. 💖
• $(POWWOWDIR)/* — definition files for aliases, etc.

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🌸 ENVIRONMENT 🌸

• TERM — your terminal type. know your vibes. 🖥️
• POWWOWDIR — where powwow will store and search for its files by default.
• POWWOWEDITOR or EDITOR — name of editor to use.
• POWWOWPAGER or PAGER — name of pager to use.

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

telnet(1), more(1), emacs(1)

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💀 DIAGNOSTICS 💀

most diagnostics are self-explanatory. some are even more self-explanatory than others — namely those who crash the program. 😭

there's a diagnostic report called core which is not currently in human-readable form. so like... good luck reading that one, bestie. 🙈

the messages from powwow are generally prefixed with a # to separate them from output from the remote host. so if you see a #, that's her talking, not the MUD. 💬

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🧚 BUGS 🧚

are you kidding?

that's it. that's the whole bugs section. she said what she said. 💅✨

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and that's the whole page, bestie! this was powwow 1.2.23, dated 2018-Sep-11 — that's the version and date, and honestly she's still serving after all these years. go play some MUDs, you've got this. 🌈💖🎀🦋🌸👑