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MCI Codes

MCI Codes

ENiGMA½ supports a variety of MCI codes. Some predefined codes produce information about the current user, system, or other statistics while others are used to instantiate a View.

General Information

MCI codes are composed of two characters and are prefixed with a percent (%) symbol.

:information_source: To explicitly tie a MCI to a specific View ID, suffix the MCI code with a number. For example: %BN1.

:information_source: Standard (non-focus) and focus colors are set by placing duplicate codes back to back in art files:

Example

Some MCI codes have additional options that may be set directly from the code itself while others – and more advanced options – are controlled via the current theme.

Relationship with Menus, Art, and Themes

A MCI code that appears in a menu.hjson entry corresponds to that found in it’s associated art file. This same MCI code can be referenced in the theme.hjson in order to apply a theme.

See Menus and Themes for more information.

Predefined Codes

There are many predefined MCI codes that can be used anywhere on the system (placed in any art file).

Code Description
BN Board Name
VL Version label, e.g. “ENiGMA½ v0.0.12-beta”
VN Version number, eg.. “0.0.12-beta”
SN SysOp username
SR SysOp real name
SL SysOp location
SA SysOp affiliations
SS SysOp sex
SE SysOp email address
UN Current user’s username
UI Current user’s user ID
UG Current user’s group membership(s)
UR Current user’s real name
LO Current user’s location
UA Current user’s age
BD Current user’s birthday (using theme date format)
US Current user’s sex
UE Current user’s email address
UW Current user’s web address
UF Current user’s affiliations
UT Current user’s theme name
UD Current user’s theme ID (e.g. “luciano_blocktronics”)
UC Current user’s login/call count
ND Current user’s connected node number
IP Current user’s IP address
ST Current user’s connected server name (e.g. “Telnet” or “SSH”)
FN Current user’s active file base filter name
DN Current user’s number of downloads
DK Current user’s download amount (formatted to appropriate bytes/megs/etc.)
UP Current user’s number of uploads
UK Current user’s upload amount (formatted to appropriate bytes/megs/etc.)
NR Current user’s upload/download ratio
KR Current user’s upload/download bytes ratio
MS Current user’s account creation date (using theme date format)
PS Current user’s post count
PC Current user’s post/call ratio
MD Current user’s status/viewing menu/activity
MA Current user’s active message area name
MC Current user’s active message conference name
ML Current user’s active message area description
CM Current user’s active message conference description
SH Current user’s term height
SW Current user’s term width
AC Current user’s total achievements
AP Current user’s total achievement points
DR Current user’s number of door runs
DM Current user’s total amount of time spent in doors
DT Current date (using theme date format)
CT Current time (using theme time format)
OS System OS (Linux, Windows, etc.)
OA System architecture (x86, x86_64, arm, etc.)
SC System CPU model
NV System underlying Node.js version
AN Current active node count
TC Total login/calls to the system ever
TT Total login/calls to the system today
RR Displays a random rumor
SD Total downloads, system wide
SO Total downloaded amount, system wide (formatted to appropriate bytes/megs/etc.)
SU Total uploads, system wide
SP Total uploaded amount, system wide (formatted to appropriate bytes/megs/etc.)
TF Total number of files on the system
TB Total file base size (formatted to appropriate bytes/megs/gigs/etc.)
TP Total messages posted/imported to the system currently
PT Total messages posted/imported to the system today
FT Total number of uploads to the system today
FB Total upload amount today (formatted to appropriate bytes/megs/etc. )
DD Total number of downloads from the system today
DB Total download amount today (formatted to appropriate bytes/megs/etc. )
MB System memory
MF System free memory
LA System load average (e.g. 0.25)
(May not be available on some platforms)
CL System current load percentage
(May not be available on some platforms)
UU System uptime in friendly format
LC Last caller to the system (username)
LT Time of last caller
LD Date of last caller
TU Total number of users on the system
NT Total new users today
NM Count of new messages address to the current user across all message areas in which they have access
NP Count of new private mail to the current user
IA Indicator as to rather the current user is available or not. See also getStatusAvailIndicators() in Themes
IV Indicator as to rather the current user is visible or not. See also getStatusVisibleIndicators() in Themes
PI Ingress bytes for the current process (since ENiGMA started up)
PE Egress bytes for the current process (since ENiGMA started up)

Some additional special case codes also exist:

Code Description
CF## Moves the cursor position forward ## characters
CB## Moves the cursor position back ## characters
CU## Moves the cursor position up ## characters
CD## Moves the cursor position down ## characters
XY A special code that may be utilized for placement identification when creating menus or to extend an otherwise empty space in an art file down the screen.

:information_source: More are added all the time so also check out core/predefined_mci.js for a full listing.

:memo: Many codes attempt to pay homage to Oblivion/2, iNiQUiTY, etc.

Views

A View is a control placed on a form that can display variable data or collect input. One example of a View is a Vertical Menu (%VM): Old-school BBSers may recognize this as a lightbar menu.

Code Name Description Notes
TL Text Label Displays text Static content. See Text View
ET Edit Text Collect user input Single line entry. See Edit Text
ME Masked Edit Text Collect user input using a mask See Masked Edit and Mask Edits below.
MT Multi Line Text Edit Multi line edit control Used for FSE, display of FILE_ID.DIZ, etc. See Multiline Text Edit
BT Button A button …it’s a button. See Button
VM Vertical Menu A vertical menu AKA a vertical lightbar; Useful for lists. See Vertical Menu
HM Horizontal Menu A horizontal menu AKA a horizontal lightbar. See Horizontal Menu
FM Full Menu A menu that can go both vertical and horizontal. See Full Menu
SM Spinner Menu A spinner input control Select one from multiple options. See Spinner Menu
TM Toggle Menu A toggle menu Commonly used for Yes/No style input. See Toggle Menu
KE Key Entry A single key input control Think hotkeys

:information_source: Peek at /core/mci_view_factory.js to see additional information.

Mask Edits

Mask Edits (%ME) use the special maskPattern property to control a mask. This can be useful for gathering dates, phone numbers, so on.

maskPattern’s can be composed of the following characters:

  • #: Numeric 0-9
  • A: Alpha a-z, A-Z
  • @: Alphanumeric (combination of the previous patterns)
  • &: Any “printable” character

Any other characters are literals.

An example of a mask for a date may look like this: ##/##/####.

Additionally, the following theme stylers can be applied:

  • styleSGR1: Controls literal character colors for non-focused controls
  • styleSGR2: Controls literal character colors for focused controls
  • styleSGR3: Controls fill colors (characters that have not yet received input).

All of the style properties can take pipe codes such as |00|08.

View Identifiers

As mentioned above, MCI codes can (and often should) be explicitly tied to a View Identifier. Simply speaking this is a number representing the particular view. These can be useful to reference in code, apply themes, etc.

A view ID is tied to a MCI code by specifying it after the code. For example: %VM1 or %SM10.

Properties & Theming

Predefined MCI codes and other Views can have properties set via menu.hjson and further themed via theme.hjson. See Themes for more information on this subject.

Common Properties

Property Description
textStyle Sets the standard (non-focus) text style. See Text Styles below
focusTextStyle Sets focus text style. See Text Styles below
itemSpacing Used to separate items in menus such as Vertical Menu and Horizontal Menu Views.
height Sets the height of views such as menus that may be > 1 character in height
width Sets the width of a view
focus If set to true, establishes initial focus
text Set’s the view’s text if applicable, such as a TextView or EditTextView amongst others. See MCI Formatting below for advanced formatting options using the
submit If set to true any accept action upon this view will submit the encompassing form
itemFormat Sets the format for a list entry. See Entry Formatting below
focusItemFormat Sets the format for a focused list entry. See Entry Formatting below

These are just a few of the properties set on various views. Use the source Luke, as well as taking a look at the default menu.hjson and theme.hjson files!

Custom Properties

Often a module will provide custom properties that receive format objects (See Entry Formatting below). Custom property formatting can be declared in the config block. For example, browseInfoFormat10…N (where N is up to 99) in the file_area_list module received a fairly extensive format object that contains {fileName}, {estReleaseYear}, etc.

Text Styles

Standard style types available for textStyle and focusTextStyle:

Style Description
normal Leaves text as-is. This is the default.
upper ENIGMA BULLETIN BOARD SOFTWARE
lower enigma bulletin board software
title Enigma Bulletin Board Software
first lower eNIGMA bULLETIN bOARD sOFTWARE
small vowels eNiGMa BuLLeTiN BoaRD SoFTWaRe
big vowels EniGMa bUllEtIn bOArd sOftwArE
small i ENiGMA BULLETiN BOARD SOFTWARE
mixed EnIGma BUlLEtIn BoaRd SOfTWarE (randomly assigned)
l33t 3n1gm4 bull371n b04rd 50f7w4r3

Entry Formatting

Various strings can be formatted using a syntax that allows width & precision specifiers, text styling, etc. Depending on the context, various elements can be referenced by {name}. Additional text styles can be supplied as well. The syntax is largely modeled after Python’s string format mini language.

MCI Formatting

For more advanced layouts, you may want to apply formatting to MCI codes. In this case, an alternative syntax is supported similar to standard Entry Formatting.

MCI codes can be surrounded by { and } in the text field in your theme.hjson for a Text Label (%TL aka Text View). Some examples:

text: "|00|07{BN!stylel33t}" // render board name in "l33t" text

// MCI codes that produce a number can use appropriate stylers as well
text: "|00|07{SD:,}"
// ...or perhaps
text: "|00:07{SD!countWithAbbr}"

:bulb: MCI formatting also applies when programmatically calling setText() of TextView’s and derived views.

Additional Text Styles

Some of the text styles mentioned above are also available in the mini format language:

Style Description
normal Leaves text as-is. This is the default.
toUpperCase or styleUpper ENIGMA BULLETIN BOARD SOFTWARE
toLowerCase or styleLower enigma bulletin board software
styleTitle Enigma Bulletin Board Software
styleFirstLower eNIGMA bULLETIN bOARD sOFTWARE
styleSmallVowels eNiGMa BuLLeTiN BoaRD SoFTWaRe
styleBigVowels EniGMa bUllEtIn bOArd sOftwArE
styleSmallI ENiGMA BULLETiN BOARD SOFTWARE
styleMixed EnIGma BUlLEtIn BoaRd SOfTWarE (randomly assigned)
styleL33t 3n1gm4 bull371n b04rd 50f7w4r3

Additional text styles are available for numbers:

Style Description
sizeWithAbbr File size (converted from bytes) with abbreviation such as 1 MB, 2.2 GB, 34 KB, etc.
sizeWithoutAbbr Just the file size (converted from bytes) without the abbreviation. For example: 1024 becomes 1.
sizeAbbr Just the abbreviation given a file size (converted from bytes) such as MB or GB.
countWithAbbr Count with abbreviation such as 100 K, 4.3 B, etc.
countWithoutAbbr Just the count
countAbbr Just the abbreviation such as M for millions.
durationHours Converts the provided hours value to something friendly such as 4 hours, or 4 days.
durationMinutes Converts the provided minutes to something friendly such as 10 minutes or 2 hours
durationSeconds Converts the provided seconds to something friendly such as 23 seconds or 2 minutes

Examples

Suppose a format object contains the following elements: userName and affils. We could create a itemFormat entry that builds a item to our specifications: |04{userName!styleFirstLower} |08- |13{affils}. This may produce a string such as this:

Example

:bulb: Remember that a Python string format mini language style syntax is available for widths, alignment, number prevision, etc. as well. A number can be made to be more human readable for example: {byteSize:,} may yield “1,123,456”.

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