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ANSI Colour Help

What is ANSI?
ANSI is a set of characters that a telnet client can interperate as a colour, giving that it has support.

ANSI is constructed out of 4 characters, the only dynamic thing about it is the number; which tells it which colour to use.

 + [ + number + m
Example: [40m

What the client does is replace this string of characters with a colour. This makes the example above represent the colour black!
What is this ""?

Being frank, this character is <esc>. Yes, the escape key!

You might have noticed that this character is not a normal character. This character in a text file means that the escape key was inputted into the text file.

Other keys that can be inputed into a text file are backspace, insert, and tab. By using a special program called an EMACS editor or copying the character from some source, like this webpage, you can get the <esc> character.

The EMACS editors allow you to enter sequences of ALL keys (including escape), and is one way to get the character. A far easier method for others would be to simply select, copy, and paste the  into whatever file once you need it from this webpage.

Remember <esc> does not mean the text <esc>! It means the character that the escape key gives into a text file.

How do I correctly use ANSI?

As stated above, the client interperates the ANSI colour code as a colour. The client replaces the text with a colour. This colour will continue to be used until another is specified. An example is shown as follows:

[31m red,[33m yellow, yellow again, and[31m red[0m
red, yellow, yellow again, and red

One rule that is important to follow is to not overlap the same colour twice, this results in some clients being unable to fully interperate the colours and results in colour errors. Take a look at the example of my Half-Orc whois. It does not overlap colours, it uses the same colour as long as it can until it switches to another and it has [0m after each line.

Always end your text with [0m which disables ANSI and prevents you from messing up a client!

How do I put this into MUME?

You need a client that supports local editing. Local editing is a special transfering protocal that your client can use to send the text to the MUME server, not all clients support this.

Then you might have to (it matters with some clients) "change editor mume" in MUME aswell as "#identify" to set up your client and MUME to be able to do local editing. In PowTTY you have to enable local editing on the last tab in the options, or if you can't figure it out download Powtty version 1.01 which has automatically enabled local editing here.

Now, when you try to change your whois, view mume-mail, or post an idea the client will pop up another program, usually being notepad. Within this progran you can paste/write what you want to add. To send the file to mume you have to save and then exit the text program. The client will automatically read the file after it has been closed and send it to the MUME server. Good luck!

Some clients that SUPPORT local editing are Powwow, Cancan, CS2, and PowTTY.
Zmud, JMC, and other clients that don't support local editing CAN NOT send ANSI to MUME.

Recommended clients are...
Windows: PowTTY
Unix: Powwow
Mac: None present


Here is an example of Jahara's Half-Orc WHOIS

                           [32m~-_         _-~[0m
                           [31m<[33mo[31m>         <[33mo[31m>[0m

[37m^     ^[0m
                          ~-_         _-~
                          <o>         <o>

                               ^     ^

Foreground Colors
Black... [30m
High Colors

* I usually don't use High Colours, they aren't supported by all clients and using a bold colour before a colour does practically the same thing as using a high colour.

Background Colors
Black... [40m
Red..... [41m
Green... [42m
Yellow.. [43m
Blue.... [44m
Magenta. [45m
Cyan.... [46m
White... [47m
Text Style Attributes
Bold........ [1m
Underline... [4m
Blink....... [5m
Inverse..... [7m
Strikethough [8m
Ansi off.... [0m

* Bold makes the colour lighter, not the text bigger.