>> Private message from Scanner:

Basic Message Sending and Receiving

(message sent to newuser)

-> From Harq al-Ada, to newuser:
-  Hiya

(message sent to newuser)

*** fuzzy dplus has left lily ***

### System Message from lily-admin (bp)
### The system updates have been completed.

(message sent to Prisoner)

You may also see additional comments after the name. For example, if the person is idle, you will find out how long it has been since they did anything. The message

(message sent to Prisoner, 2m)

<< Private message from Scanner:
-  Morning

(message sent to Isis.)

(message sent to bp.)

>> Private message from rocker, to Prisoner, nutMeg:
- Hi there, you two.

(your default sendlist is default-sendlist)

(you no longer have a default sendlist)

Basic Message Sending and Receiving

We're finally able to get to the heart of using lily! In this section, we'll take a look at some ways to send messages to discussions, to people, and to groups of people. These are frequently called public, private, and private groups respectively. Since you need to know who is on lily to send them a message, we'll also look at one bsic way to find out who is currently connected.

The default discussion

<!-- I don't like this, since it is site specific, but it might be --> <!-- a good way to start talking about the default sendlist. -->

Some sites have a default discussion that you become a member of when you join for the first time. Anything you type that is not a command or a message becomes a message to the default discussion -- this is known as your default sendlist.

If your site has a default discussion, you might want to try this. Enter any message (just make sure it doesn't have a slash, semicolon, colon, or equal sign in it) and you should see a response similar to

    (message sent to newuser)

indicating that what you have typed has been sent to everybody who is a member of the newuser discussion. Who are these people? We'll learn more about this later... don't rush things.

If you're lucky, however, you might get a message from someone else to the discussion:

    -> From Harq al-Ada, to newuser:
    -  Hiya

This indicates that you and everyone in the newuser discussion saw the message from the user named Harq al-Ada.

Messages from lily

If we have a default discussion, we've already seen examples of two types of messages that lily will send us once we've logged in. We can roughly break down what we get from lily into a couple of categories.

Conversational messages

<!-- Make sure I mention emotes somewhere in here? -->

Conversational messages are messages from other people, either to you directly, or to discussions you are a member of. Conversational messages take on one of two forms (is this getting too complex yet?):

<!-- There has GOT to be a better way to explain this -->

Connect style

All private messages and most public messages are formatted using the "Connect" style. These messages are usually intended to transmit information, as if you were discussing a topic. It contains the name (and blurb) of the person sending hte message, what kind of message it is, who received the message, and (of course) the message itself.

Emote style

Emote messages are meant to indicate actions and thoughts, as well as the basic information that Connect messages transmit. Emoting messages indicate who is taking the action and the action/message itself.

Response messages

A response message is, just as it sounds, lily responding to a command or message you sent. Most response messages such as

    (message sent to newuser)

are in parenthesis.

Informational messages

Informational messages tell you about activities of other people or discussions. For example, you will be notified about people entering or leaving lily or a particular discussion, discussions being created and destroyed, and people creating a new info file (none of which you know about yet, I'm just being a tease).

These messages all start and end with three asteriks. For example:

    *** fuzzy dplus has left lily ***

Server messages

Occasionally the server administrators may need to send a message to everyone, or the server itself will generate a message to you. All these message start with three pound signs. For example,

    ### System Message from lily-admin (bp)
    ### The system updates have been completed.

is a message from the system administrator named "bp" regarding some updates to the server.

Talking with a person one-on-one

It has often been noted that, while there are a lot of discussions, most of the conversations in lily take place privately. It's a good thing that lily makes this one of the easiest things to do. (After all this lead-in, you might be amazed just how easy it is.)

Sending a private message

All that you need to do to send a message to a person is to enter a unique part of their pseudo (not including a space), a colon or semicolon (a : or a ;), and the message. It does not matter if you use upper or lower case letters. Thats it! Lets take a look at a couple of examples:

Lets say you wanted to send a message to "Prisoner", you can type any one of the following:

prisoner;hi there

or

Pris;hi there

or

oner;hi there

(These are assuming that there is nobody that has "pris" or "oner" as part of their name.)

What if you wanted to send a message to Harq al-Ada? The following would not work:

harq al-ada;This won't work.

Why not? lily checks for a name only until it reaches a colon, semicolon, or space. If it find a space first, then it sends the message to your default sendlist. Instead, you can do one of the following, either replace the space with an underscore

harq_al-ada;This will work.

or use just a unique part of the name

harq;So will this.

Knowing your message is sent

lily will notify you when the message has been sent to the other person with a message similar to

(message sent to Prisoner)

You may also see additional comments after the name. For exdmple, if the person is idle, you will find out how long it has been since they did anything. The message

(message sent to Prisoner, 2m)

means that Prisoner has been idle for 2 minutes. Other comments you may see are away, indicating that the person is not "here" (a subject we will defer till later again), and detached, which indicates that the person is not really logged in -- there is a good chance they will get the message when they log in, but this is not guaranteed.

Receiving a private message

You don't have much say about receiving private messages. You'll suddenly get a message such as

>> Private message from Scanner:

- Morning

Carrying on a conversation

Since many people carry on conversations privately, it is very likely that you will keep sending messages to the same peson, or will reply to the person who just sent you a message. lily makes these procedures easier with a couple of shortcuts.

To send a message to the last person you sent to, you can start the line with a semicolon. So if the last person you sent to was Isis

;that's what I thought too...

should return the message

(message sent to Isis.)

To send a message to the last person that sent to you, you can use a colon at the beginning of the line. If bp had last sent you a message

:Hi to you too.

should let you know that

(message sent to bp.)

Some clients will expand the names, so you are sure who you are sending the message to.

How do I figure out who is on?

This is cheating... but... we will be discussing the /WHO command later. (You can always use the help file to figure it out in advance.)

What is a sendlist and why do I care?

A sendlist is, just as its name implies, the list of people and discussions you are sending a message to. Everything that isn't a command has a sendlist.

For messages to a person, you've already experienced sendlists - the name you type before the colon or semicolon is the most basic form of a sendlist. The names that are used when you start a message with a colon or semicolon are also special sendlists, as is the default sendlist, which we will discuss in a moment.

• Note As we discovered when sending a message to one person, you are not allowed to have spaces anywhere in a sendlist. lily gets very upset when you do, and you can be assured that things will not work as planned. You can replace all your spaces with underscores.

Sending to more than one person

Sendlists can contain more than one person or discussion. Each name must be seperated by a comma. For example, if we wanted to send a message to Achorrath, Isis, and Harq al-ada, we could type:

harq,Ach,isis;Good morning.

Carrying on a conversation with a group of people

Private essages you receive that are sent to more than one person will have all the recipients listed:

>> Private message from rocker, to Prisoner, nutMeg:

- Hi there, you two.

Since it is a fairly common thing to want to reply to everyone, and not just to the person who sent you the message, some clients will expand the equals sign at the beginning of a line to all people involved in this conversation.

Changing your default sendlist

Your default sendlist is where your messages go if you don't specify anybody else to get them. Some sites provide you with a default sendlist, while others will not.

Either way, setting your default sendlist to a person, discussion, or group that you're carrying on most of your conversation with may save you some typing time. This is done with the /SEND command

/SEND default-sendlist

where you replace default-sendlist with the sendlist that you wish to make your default. lily should reply

(your default sendlist is default-sendlist)

if there are no problems.

Preventing missends

What happens if you accidentally put that space when you're sending a message? lily faithfully sends it to your default sendlist. This can cause some embarrasing problems in some cases.

To avoid these missends, you may with to turn your default sendlist off, and explicitly give a sendlist for each message.

/SEND OFF

should produce the response

(you no longer have a default sendlist)

Summary

In this section, we have learned the most basic ways to send messages to other people. We have learned about default discussions and default sendlists, as well as the kinds of messages that lily will send us. Most importantly, we have learned how to send private messages, how to carry on conversations with private messages, and how to change your sendlists to help speed conversations or prevent missends.

In the next session, we will be talking about discussions and public messages. Then we'll take a look at some information gathering techniques (especially finding out more about who is on the system), and reveal a couple of other tips and tricks.