As you will discover (or perhaps already have), MacFIBS uses a variety of windows to handle different functions. This section discusses features of the various MacFIBS windows.

Window–specific menus
Most windows have their own menu with commands specific to that window. For example, when the terminal window is active, you will see a menu titled “Terminal”; if you select the board window, that menu will be replaced by a menu titled “Board”.

Terminal window
The Terminal window logs all incoming and outgoing text, much like a terminal program you may have used in the past. The Terminal window can be used to type commands directly to FIBS. Outgoing commands are shown in bold, incoming messages are in normal style.

        To type commands into the terminal window,
          type in the small input area at the top of the
          Terminal window and press Return.

My goal is to eliminate the need for the Terminal window altogether; MacFIBS should entirely hide the FIBS command language from the user.

In this version, however, the Terminal window is still important. There are still a number of FIBS commands that can only be executed by typing them in the Terminal window (see the Known Problems chapter for specific information about unsupported FIBS commands). 

Moreover, many error messages are only displayed in the Terminal window. If you are unsure what’s going on, the Terminal window is the best place to look.

The Terminal menu, which appears in the menu bar whenever the Terminal window is frontmost, has only one command: Auto Scroll. By default, the text in the Terminal window is scrolled whenever new text arrives from the FIBS server. If you wish to look back in the terminal text, toggle Auto Scroll off temporarily to disable scrolling.

The Player window
This window lists all users currently connected to FIBS. Use the Player window to invite another player to play a match, to watch a game in progress, to chat with another player, etc.

You can sort the player list by name, status, rating, or location using the Sort By submenu under the Player menu. As a shortcut, you can simply click the heading text in the Player window to sort the list.

Player Information
You can assign each player a color and set their bold and gag flags. The color and bold information are used in the Chat window to display messages from that player, the gag flag suppresses any shouts from the player. The bold, gag, and color settings are preserved in the “MacFIBS Player” file.

You can also record notes about a player in a small text window. This is a useful place to record your playing experiences with an opponent.

As new players log into FIBS, their names are added to the player list. However, MacFIBS cannot determine the rating, status, or location of these new players. You may wish to periodically refresh the player list to update this information; use the Refresh List command under the Players menu.

The Board window
The Board window contains the backgammon board. This is where all the action is; use the Board window to watch or play a match.

You can set a variety of options in the Board menu: board size, playing direction, color,  dice sounds on/off, and show/hide pip numbers. These settings are preserved for the next time you play MacFIBS.

For more information on rolling dice, moving checkers, etc. refer to the next chapter.

 

Pip counts
The bottom of the Board window contains score and pip count information whenever you are watching or playing a game.

        If allowpips is FALSE, then you will not
          see any pip count information in the
          bottom right section of the board window.

What about that other number?
The last number (1.187 in the picture above) represents a weighted difference, based on the two players’ pip counts. The weighted difference ‘wd’ is calculated:

wd = (p2 - p1) / (sqrt(p1 + p2))

where p1 = your pip count and p2 = opponent’s pip count. In plain English, ‘wd’ is the difference in pip count divided by the square root of the sum of the pip counts. It can be used to assess your position in races and bearing off situations.

This metric was defined by Danny Kleinman, an author of numerous books on backgammon that emphasize mathematical analysis. For more information, you can contact him at 5312 1/2 Village Green, Los Angeles, CA 90016.

The Chat window
The Chat window allows you to communicate with other players. You can kibitz, say, whisper, shout, or tell messages to other users. For more information on these different chat options, refer to the FIBS help files.

The chat window has some interesting features that make it easier to chat while you are playing a match.

The Chat window “Typ-O-Magic” feature
The Chat window supports a rather unique way of typing that I call Typ-O-Magic. This eliminates the need to select the Chat window when you wish to kibitz with your opponent during a match.

If the Board, Player, or Announcement window is frontmost, whatever keys you type will be forwarded automatically to the Chat window. This is most useful with the Board window, which you typically would have as your frontmost window to make moves during a match.

Typ-O-Magic does not work with the Terminal window since it has its own input field for entering FIBS commands.

The Chat window popup menu
The Chat window contains a popup menu that stores different chat commands. When you type a line in the Chat window input field and press return, whatever is in the popup menu is prepended to what you have typed.

When you first start MacFIBS, the Chat popup menu has six items: (blank), Kibitz, Say, Whisper, Shout, and Tell. As you chat with other players, new items of the form “Tell <player>” are added to the menu.

The blank item allows you to type entire chat commands (or any commands for that matter), just as you would from the Terminal window. The sixth command, "Tell" allows you to tell something to a player by starting the line with that player’s name.

There are two ways that new “Tell <player>” commands are automatically added and/or selected:
  (1) from the Player window, you Tell (Cmd-T) player ‘Sue’ something, or
  (2) player ‘Sue’ says something directly to you.

Either of these actions will add “Tell Sue” to the popup (if she isn’t already on the list), and select it.

         When you send a chat message to another player
           with the plain “Tell” command, the player’s
           name is not added to the popup menu.

Controlling the Chat window popup menu 
When the Board or Chat window is active, you can control the Chat window popup from the keyboard. Use Cmd-UpArrow and Cmd-DownArrow to move up or down the Chat popup menu items. This allows you to quickly change from “Kibitz” to “Tell guinevere” to “Whisper” from the keyboard.

Note that in the Player window, Cmd-UpArrow takes you to the beginning of the list, Cmd-DownArrow to the end; you cannot change the Chat popup from the Player window.

 

The MacFIBS Players file
You can edit the MacFIBS Players files to add, delete, or modify information about players. This information is stored as named Macintosh resources; a player may have up to three resources in the file.

'Plyr' resources keep track of a player’s color, bold, and gag settings. The MacFIBS Players file contains a ResEdit template to edit these.

'TEXT' resources are used to keep player comments, and 'snd ' resources are used to keep sounds played when a particular player logs in (you must use ResEdit to add more sounds—MacFIBS itself doesn’t provide a way to add them).

These resources are identified by the player’s name as the resource name; the resource ID number is not important. The resource ID numbers for player login sounds should be greater than 10,000 to avoid conflicts with other sound resources in MacFIBS.