A letter is a special kind of note (see 'help notes') with the added feature that it can be recycled by anyone who can read it. This is often useful for notes from one player to another. You create the letter using the XpressObject Editor, encrypt it so that only you and the other player can read it (see 'help encrypt') and then either give it to the player in question or leave it where they will find it. Once they've read it, they can use the 'burn' command to recycle the letter.
@examine Letter
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Instructions and Information on Specific Verbs (Commands)
Using the Encore Xpress Object Editor
From within the enCore Object Editor (whether as you create the Letter or as you seek to edit it), you can write the message the Letter contains, edit it, or erase the text. You can not encrypt it from the Xpress Object Editor.
Using Specific Verb Commands
write <anything> on <Letter>
Will write one section of text onto the Letter (up to a carriage return).
No quotation marks are needed around the text. If you are adding a second line
of text immediately after you have written your first line, you must LOOK at
the letter again first, and then add an additional line.
read <Letter>
Will display the text of the note both in the view window and the text window.
erase <Letter>
Will erase the whole letter. You can not erase specific lines of the letter.
burn <Letter>
Destroys the named letter irretrievably. Only players who can read the
letter can do this.
encrypt <Letter> with <anything>
Restricts the set of players who can read the named note or letter to those
for whom the given key expression is true. See 'help keys' below for information
on the syntax and semantics of key expressions. Only the owner of a note may
encrypt a letter.
decrypt <Letter>
Will clear any encryptions placed on the letter (so anyone can read it).
print <Letter>
Prints the text written on the named object, usually a note or letter.
Some notes are encrypted so that only certain players may read them. Type:
look <note> will display the text of the note as well.
Help Keys--help with encrypting
This MOO supports a simple but powerful notation for specifying locks on objects, encryption on notes, and other applications. The idea is to describe a constraint that must be satisfied concerning what some object must be or contain in order to use some other object.
The constraint is given in the form of a logical expression, made up of object numbers connected with the operators 'and', 'or', and 'not' (written '&&', '||', and '!', for compatibility with the MOO programming language). When writing such expressions, though, one usually does not use object numbers directly, but rather gives their names, as with most MOO commands.
These logical expressions (called 'key expressions') are always evaluated in the context of some particular 'candidate' object, to see if that object meets the constraint. To do so, we consider the candidate object, along with every object it contains (and the ones those objects contain, and so on), to be 'true' and all other objects to be 'false'.
As an example, suppose the player Munchkin wanted to lock the exit leading to his home so that only he and the holder of his magic wand could use it. Further, suppose that Munchkin was object #999 and the wand was #1001. Munchkin would use the '@lock' command to lock the exit with the following key expression:
me || magic wand
and the system would understand this to mean
#999 || #1001
That is, players could only use the exit if they were (or were carrying) either #999 or #1001.
To encrypt a note or letter so that it could only be read by Munchkin or someone carrying his book, his bell, and his candle, Munchkin would use the 'encrypt' command with the key expression
me || (bell && book && candle)
If using the object names does not seem to be working, you can try using their object numbers. Also, if you do not include yourself in the key expression, you will not be able to read the letter or use the exit (or whatever).
Finally, to keep players from taking a large gold coffin through a particularly narrow exit, Munchkin would use this key expression:
! coffin
That is, the expression would be false for any object that was or was carrying the coffin.
There is one other kind of clause that can appear in a key expression:
? <object>
This is evaluated by testing whether the given object is unlocked for the candidate object; if so, this clause is true, and otherwise, it is false. This allows you to have several locks all sharing some single other one; when the other one is changed, all of the locks change their behavior simultaneously.