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TinyMUSH/Mac Release History

TinyMUSH/Mac 0.5.0d1

TinyMUSH/Mac 0.5.0d1 fixes several bugs and includes indices for help and news.

Notes

• The version number now indicates that this release is a developmental version, which all releases have been, despite the lack of the conventional decoration in the version number. I also have an extra digit to work with now. :)

• TinyMUSH/Mac is now compiled with 68020 instructions, which may improve speed in some areas. If you want to run it on a Mac Plus, SE, Classic, Portable, or PowerBook 100, then you're nuts, and I must recommend that you reconsider. But I'll make you a separate version anyway.

Bug fixes

• Problems with incorrect translation between numeric and string IP addresses, possibly along with other, unidentified problems, were caused by incorrect linking of the program code. In particular were problems with site configuration. These have been fixed.

• I've changed alarm(1) to alarm(3), which seems to reduce both the sporadic disconnections and the repeating new_connection messages. A side effect is that timed commands are only checked every three seconds. The use of alarm() in the first place is clearly a design flaw, and even constitutes abuse of the function. Replacing it with a more appropriate mechanism is one of many improvements on my agenda.

• The dangers of executing some really filthy code to store the help indices in memory were previously avoided only by the lack of .indx files. The code remains filthy, but less of it is used. The system, or at least my debugger, is no longer brought to its knees trying to allocate lots of little bits of memory.

Added features

• The new files help.indx, wizhelp.indx, and news.indx are now included, though MkIndx is not (yet). Warning! Do not use these with prior releases of TinyMUSH/Mac! Version 0.4.1 or earlier has not been revised to curb memory abuse when storing the indices, and is very likely to crash the system.