This manual documents using Mserv through the built-in telnet
interface. You will need a telnet client to make use of this feature. If
you prefer graphical interfaces where you simply click to perform actions
then this is not the method for you.
If you are a new user, it is recommended you read through this manual
from top to bottom - until you get bored, that is.
Connecting to the server
Before you begin you will need a username and password in order to
connect to the server. Your Mserv administrator will give this to you.
Once you have connected to the system you can change your password,
however your username is unique to you and cannot be changed easily.
If you have successfully connected to the server you will be presented
with text that looks something like:
Connected to server.mserv.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
200 Mserv 0.30 (c) James Ponder 1999-2000 - Type: USER
.
This is the welcome banner and announces the version of Mserv that you
have connected to. As you can see, it suggests that you type
USER <username> to continue. Commands in Mserv are case
insensitive, so you can use USER or user or infact anything
inbetween the two. Command parameters are always separated from one another
with one or more spaces. If your username is fred, you would type something
like:
USER fred
Once you have typed in USER followed by your username, you will
be prompted for your password, like so:
201 Username ok - now type: PASS
.
This means that the server has understood your connection request and
requires a password to authenticate you. In exactly the same way that
you specified your username, specify your password by typing PASS
followed by your password. If your password is silly then
you need to type:
PASS silly
If your username and password were valid, Mserv will greet you with:
[] Successfully authenticated! Welcome fred.
From this point on, all server responses are prefixed with []
so that it is easy for you to distinguish something you have typed from
that which the server has said.
Setting your password
To set a new password you need to know your old password. This might
sound strange but this is to ensure someone else doesn't change your
password whilst you are away from the keyboard.
The command you need to use is PASSWORD, which has two parameters - your
old password and your new password. For example, if your old password was
silly and you would like your new password to be wiggle,
you would type:
PASSWORD silly wiggle
Note: Passwords are encrypted on the server, but because you are connected
using telnet your password could be read off the network, and as such you
should choose a password for Mserv that is different from any other. Also,
you can never stop the Mserv administrator from altering their copy of Mserv
to store user's passwords.
Using the on-line help system
Mserv has a simple, but very effective, help system. All commands have
descriptions and syntax information available. You should get used to
using it as it is extremely useful.
To start, simply type:
HELP
The server will respond with a list of commands. Only the commands that
you have access to are displayed:
[] This is Mserv version 0.30
[] Commands:
[] QUIT HELP USER PASS DATE
[] STATUS USERINFO WHO SAY EMOTE
[] ALBUMS TRACKS RATINGS QUEUE UNQUEUE
[] PLAY STOP NEXT PAUSE CLEAR
[] REPEAT RANDOM FILTER FACTOR TOP
[] VOLUME BASS TREBLE HISTORY RATE
[] CHECK SEARCH SEARCHF ASEARCH INFO
[] PASSWORD IDEA X
Once you have identified a command you'd like more information on,
type:
HELP <command>
For example, let's say you're interested in the HELP command itself,
so you would type:
HELP help
The response from the server is two lines - the first is a description
of the command itself, and the second is a syntax line that indicates what
parameters are available. For the command HELP:
[] Displays help
[] Syntax: HELP [<command> [<sub-command>]]
The syntax lines are standard BNF syntax:
- <x> indicates a parameter, not literal text
- [y] indicates that whatever is contained in the brackets is optional
Thus, you can specify HELP with no parameters, or HELP
<command> or lastly HELP <command>
<sub-command>. The latter form is useful for commands like
SET which have sub-commands, rather than being a command itself.
Listing the albums available
Mserv is designed around having a large number of albums containing a
small number of tracks, thus mirroring real-life CD collections.
To list the albums available, type:
ALBUMS
The server will list the albums in the following format:
[] 1 Abba Gold (Greatest Hits)
[] 2 Abba The music still goes on
[] 3 Alanis Morisette Jagged little pill
[] 4 Alisha's attic Alisha rules the world
[] 5 Alisha's attic Illumina
[] 6 All Saints All Saints
[] 7 Andre Delgada Mountain Moods
[] 8 Aqua Aquarium
etc.
The albums are numbered, and all commands use this number to
reference the album. You are not expected to remember these numbers, but
they will be displayed to you for typing in. All albums have an author
and a name, displayed above side by side.
Listing the tracks within an album
The command TRACKS is used to list the tracks inside an album. It
takes one optional parameter which specifies the album number. Without a
parameter this command displays the tracks within the album that the
currently playing track came from.
So, if you were to type:
TRACKS 8
The server will reply listing the tracks in the following format:
[] Tracks in album 'Aquarium':
[] 8/1 S Aqua Happy boys & girls 3:39
[] 8/2 G Aqua My oh my 3:26
[] 8/3 G Aqua Barbie girl 3:19
[] 8/4 N Aqua Good morning sunshine 4:06
[] 8/5 G Aqua Doctor Jones 3:25
[] 8/6 G Aqua Heat of the night 3:37
[] 8/7 N Aqua Be a man 4:25
[] 8/8 S Aqua Lollipop (Candyman) 3:38
[] 8/9 S Aqua Roses are red 3:47
[] 8/10 N Aqua Turn back time 4:11
[] 8/11 N Aqua Calling you 3:32
On the far left is the track number, written in
<album>/<track> form. All command parameters are space separated
so when entering an album/track combination into a command make sure you
don't put the /.
The letter that follows the track number is your current rating of the
track. If you've not rated the track it will be a - which indicates
that it is unrated.
The next two columns contain the author and name of the track. Note
that although in this example the author of all the tracks are the same as
the author of the album, this does not necassarily have to be the case.
The time on the far right is the track length in
<minutes>:<seconds>.
Displaying information about an album or track
The INFO command is used to display information about albums or
tracks. Without a parameter this command will display information about
the currently playing track. With one parameter this command displays
information about the specified album, and with two parameters this command
displays information about the specified track.
So, if you typed:
INFO 8
The server response would be:
[] Album 8
[] Album name: Aquarium
[] author: Aqua
[] Total duration: 41:10.2
The name and author of the given album are displayed, along with a
total of all the durations within the album. This total is not a property
of the album as such, it is simply calculated from the tracks within it.
If you typed:
INFO 8 3
The server would interpret this as a request for information on track 3
in album 8:
[] Album 8, track 3
[] Track name: Barbie girl
[] author: Aqua
[] Album name: Aquarium
[] author: Aqua
[] Dated: unknown
[] Duration: 3:19.9 (256kbps)
[] Genre(s): pop
[] Played: 21 days ago
[] Filter: included
[] Rated: GOOD; mean 75.0%
[] temporally adjusted to 71.2%
The information above is described below:
- Track name/author
- The name and author of the track
- Album name/author
- The name and author of the album containing the track
- Dated
- This is the year of the track. This year is entered by your Mserv
administrator, and as such could indicate the date of production,
copyright, or something else.
- Duration
- The duration information lists the track length in
<minutes>:<seconds>.<tenths>, with miscellaneous
related information in brackets. With mp3s this is normally the bitrate
if it could be deduced.
- Genre(s)
- This lists the genres that this track belongs, if any. The genres
are set by your Mserv administrator and can be anything at all in order
to segregate tracks. The genre is most useful for setting filters.
- Played
- This displays how long ago the track was last played.
- Filter
- The filter currently set makes this track either included
or excluded.
- Rated
- This shows rating information for this track. Your rate is shown
followed by the mean rating when all users are considered for this
track. The temporally adjusted rating is a biased rating when the
time since last play is taken into account. This makes recently played
tracks have a lower rating than those that haven't been played for some
time.
Viewing and adding to the queue
The QUEUE command is used for displaying the current queue
contents, as well as for adding new tracks and even albums to the queue.
So, if you type:
QUEUE
the contents of the queue are displayed:
[] The following tracks are in the queue:
[] squish 169/10 S The Doobie Brothers Long train running 3:28
[] squish 53/6 S Dubstar Week in week out 4:26
[] squish 155/1 S The Corrs Only when I sleep 4:24
[] squish 181/1 S Tasmin Archer Sleeping satellite 4:41
The next track to be played is at the top, with the most recently added
queue entries at the bottom.
If a different user adds a track to the queue, their track will be placed
inbetween any consecutive songs that were queued by the same user. This
means that a single user cannot dominate the queue by repeatedly adding
entries. Note however that Mserv is a co-operative environment, there are
no restrictions stopping a user from removing someone else's track from the
queue, or infact clearing it entirely.
To queue track 8/9, type:
QUEUE 8 9
The server will reply with:
[] The following tracks have been added to the queue by squish:
[] squish 8/9 S Aqua Roses are red
This output is actually a broadcast message, which means that as well
as being shown to you, it has also been sent to all users currently
connected, thus alerting them that you have placed a new item in the
queue.
You can also queue an entire album by omitting the second parameter,
so to queue the entire album 3:
QUEUE 3
This will cause a broadcast message to everyone looking like:
[] The following tracks have been added to the queue by squish:
[] squish 3/1 G Alanis Morisette All I really want 4:44
[] squish 3/2 - Alanis Morisette You oughta know 4:09
[] squish 3/3 - Alanis Morisette Perfect 3:07
[] squish 3/4 N Alanis Morisette Hand in my pocket 3:41
[] squish 3/5 - Alanis Morisette Right through you 2:55
[] squish 3/6 N Alanis Morisette Forgiven 5:00
[] squish 3/7 G Alanis Morisette You learn 3:59
[] squish 3/8 - Alanis Morisette Head over feet 4:27
[] squish 3/9 - Alanis Morisette Mary Jane 4:40
[] squish 3/10 N Alanis Morisette Ironic 3:47
[] squish 3/11 - Alanis Morisette Not the doctor 3:47
[] squish 3/12 G Alanis Morisette Wake up 4:53
As you can see this queues up the tracks in order that they appear in
the album. If you wish the server to randomly play the tracks in an album
then specify RANDOM as the last parameter. Each time an album is
queued it will be randomised differently. So, sticking
with album 3, type:
QUEUE 3 random
and magically, the server will randomise the tracks and
output a broadcast:
[] The following tracks have been added to the queue by squish:
[] squish 3/12 G Alanis Morisette Wake up 4:53
[] squish 3/9 - Alanis Morisette Mary Jane 4:40
[] squish 3/2 - Alanis Morisette You oughta know 4:09
[] squish 3/10 N Alanis Morisette Ironic 3:47
[] squish 3/6 N Alanis Morisette Forgiven 5:00
[] squish 3/4 N Alanis Morisette Hand in my pocket 3:41
[] squish 3/3 - Alanis Morisette Perfect 3:07
[] squish 3/5 - Alanis Morisette Right through you 2:55
[] squish 3/7 G Alanis Morisette You learn 3:59
[] squish 3/1 G Alanis Morisette All I really want 4:44
[] squish 3/8 - Alanis Morisette Head over feet 4:27
[] squish 3/11 - Alanis Morisette Not the doctor 3:47
If you wish to remove a track from the queue you can use the
UNQUEUE command. For example, if you wished to remove track 3/8 you
would type:
UNQUEUE 3 8
Lastly, to clear the queue, type:
CLEAR
The server will acknowledge this with the broadcast:
[] Queue cleared by squish
Starting, stopping and pausing play
PLAY
Assuming the server is idle, queuing a track does not start it playing.
To do this, you must type:
PLAY
Which will commence play of the first track in the queue. If there are
no tracks in the queue, or the queue becomes empty in play mode, then play
will stop or the server will start to play random tracks (if enabled).
PAUSE
Whilst a track is playing, you may pause playback by
typing:
PAUSE
To resume play, issue PLAY again.
STOP
To stop play you can type:
STOP
The queue is not cleared by stopping, so that you can resume play by
issuing PLAY.
NEXT
This will stop play of the currently playing track and move onto the next
track in the queue, or the next random track if the queue is empty (if random
is enabled).
REPEAT
This command causes the currently playing song to be placed back on the
queue.
Random play
Normally the server is not enabled for random play, and will only play
tracks entered into the queue. Mserv has an advanced random system that
tries to play tracks that those in the room want to hear. This works because
users (over time) rate tracks on the server. Mserv combines the users
ratings of those who are currently logged on to produce a mean value,
and then adjusts this value according to how long ago it was played
(temporal adjustment).
The RANDOM command takes one optional parameter, on or
off. For example, to turn on random play,
type:
RANDOM on
To display the current setting, type RANDOM on it's own.
Once Mserv has sorted the tracks based on their rating, it chooses a
track. In order to not be completely random it has a higher chance of
choosing tracks further up the list (higher rated tracks) than ones lower
down the list. In order to do this it passes it's random number through
a power/log function.
You can set how 'more likely' Mserv is to play tracks with higher ratings
by adjusting the FACTOR. This factor is set to 0.60 by default. Any
values above 0.5 mean the server will play favoured tracks, any values below
0.5 mean the server will play unfavourable tracks! (US. favor/favorable)
Note that the special value 0.5 means the server will play truely random
tracks and user's ratings will not affect choice.
For example, for it to be more likely for the server to play your
worst tracks, type:
FACTOR 0.2
Rating tracks
There are five levels to which a track can be rated: AWFUL, BAD, NEUTRAL,
GOOD and SUPERB. These levels are associated with you liking the track
0%, 25%, 50%, 75% or 100%. A generally accepted way of rating is to rate
tracks NEUTRAL if you don't care much for the track, but are happy to listen
to it. Rate tracks GOOD if you like the track, but not enough to go wild
about it, and SUPERB if you love it. Rate something BAD if you don't like
the track and AWFUL if you want to ensure the music server will never ever
play the track in random mode (this rating is special in this regard).
There are two other rates that the server might think you've rating a
track that occur automatically: UNRATED and HEARD. All tracks start off
UNRATED and become HEARD when you listen to them the first time. This
is mostly for information purposes when you use the INFO command.
RATE
The RATE command takes between 1 and 3 parameters, the last of
which is always one of the five ratings listed above. If you don't specify
anything else then this is an instruction to rate the currently playing
track. For example:
RATE GOOD
rates the current track, GOOD. You also rate any track on the server by
giving the command the album and track you wish to
rate:
RATE 8 3 GOOD
Although it's not recommended, you can also rate an entire album. This
will only affect tracks that haven't been rated, thus 'filling in the
blanks', e.g.:
RATE 8 NEUTRAL
Will rate all tracks NEUTRAL in album 8, except track 3, since it was
rated GOOD above.
RATINGS
The INFO command shows you what you rated a track,
but in order to see what everyone else rated a track you need to use the
RATINGS command, for example:
RATINGS 8 3
This will return something like:
[] Ratings of track 'Barbie girl' (8/3):
[] Jogu GOOD - 12th April 1999
[] XLCUS NEUTRAL - 12th April 1999
[] squish GOOD - 2nd May 1999
[] glen GOOD - 5th October 1999
[] jon SUPERB - 26th July 1999
[] Polsy GOOD - 4th August 1999
[] tim AWFUL - 23rd August 1999
Quite simply this shows the user's name along with what they rated the
track and when.
You can use the RATINGS command without any parameters, in which
case it will show you the ratings for the currently playing track.
Searching
The SEARCH command takes one parameter, a piece of text to search
upon. The server will look for tracks whose name or author contains the
text that you are searching for. For
example:
SEARCH power of
Will look for tracks containing the string power of. The command
does not support AND/OR type operations. The reasult of this command might
result in something like:
[] Search results:
[] 13/11 - Andre Delgada The power of love 4:40
[] 188/9 - Eternal Power of a woman 3:53
[] 207/2 - Jennifer Rush The power of love 4:24
[] 99/10 S Madonna The power of good-bye 4:12
A more advanced type of search is SEARCHF which takes a filter
string as an argument. The format of this is exactly the same as for the
FILTER command.
For example:
SEARCHF bob=superb
Which results in a list of tracks that user bob has rated superb:
[] These songs match filter:
[] 2/1 S Mark Snow X-Files Theme 2:25
The above commands search for tracks, there is also the ASEARCH
command for searching for an album. Use it as you would the SEARCH
command.
For example:
ASEARCH whitney
would search for albums
containing whitney in either the album author or name:
[] Search results:
[] 290 Whitney Houston My love is your love
[] 291 Whitney Houston The Greatest Hits - Disc 1
[] 292 Whitney Houston The Greatest Hits - Disc 2
Volume and level controls
Mserv has three commands that interact with the sound system:
VOLUME, BASS and TREBLE. They may not be enabled on
your server as it requires that Mserv has support for the particular system
that Mserv is running on.
All three commands support the same parameters. To see what the current
setting is, simply type the command. For example, the current volume level
can be shown by typing:
VOLUME
The response is a percentage between 0 and 100:
[] Volume is currently 34%
To change a setting you can enter a single parameter to represent the
new value, so to change the volume setting to 50%,
type:
VOLUME 50
This will cause the server to broadcast a message to all currently
connected users indicating the new volume setting:
[] Volume has been set to 46% by squish
As you can see, Mserv set the volume to 46% and not 50%. Nothing has
gone wrong - what has happened is that Mserv told your sound system to
change the volume to 50%, but your sound system chose to set itself to
46%. This usually happens because sound cards don't always have 100 levels
of sound. It is quite common to find sound cards that have volume steps of
3% or 6%.
Another form of parameter is an increment or decrement. To specify this
you put a plus or minus symbol followed by the percentage value to increase
or decrease the sound level. For example, when the sound system is at 46%
and you type:
VOLUME +10
The server will increase the level to 56%, but of course your sound
system will round this to the nearest setting it can accomodate:
[] Volume has been set to 52% by squish
On this particular server, this means it changes the setting to 52%.
For systems that exhibit this rounding, another useful command
exists:
VOLUME +
Which simply increases the volume to the next available step. You
can also specify multiple +s to increase the volume in that many
steps, e.g. VOLUME +++ will increase the volume three times.
BASS and TREBLE work in exactly the same way as above.
Talking amongst users
Mserv is not a talker - there are deliberately no whispering, groups,
lists, channels, etc. The two commands available are SAY and
EMOTE. If you wish to say something, simply type SAY followed
by what you wish to say. For example:
SAY hello fred
Will result in the following being broadcast to all connected users:
[] <squish> hello fred
Your username is placed in angled brackets, followed by your text. If
you wish to do an emotion, you need to use EMOTE. For example if
you wished to grin at someone, you would
type:
EMOTE grins
Will result in:
[] * squish grins
Finally, if you wish to see who is online at the moment, you can use the
WHO command, which takes no parameters. This will result in a listing
looking like:
[] The following people are online:
[] Name Flags Idle Site
[] squish P 0 192.168.1.44
[] jogu P 14 192.168.1.23
[] 2 connected, 2 total
The list shows the name of the user, their flags, how many minutes they
have been idle, and the IP address of the site they are connected from.
The flags are defined as:
- G = Guest user
- U = Normal user
- P = Privileged user
- M = Master user
Server status
The server has a number of commands for displaying information about
what is going on.
STATUS
If a song is playing, you have already encountered the INFO
command to display information about the currently playing song, but a
more general command STATUS is available for information about
the server itself.
There are no parameters for this command, and the output looks
something like:
[] Paused on album 37, track 7
[] Track name: International velvet
[] author: Catatonia
[] Time playing: 2:48
[] Filter: (rock|pop)&(good|superb)
[] Tracks included: 2081
[] excluded: 1256
[] Random: ON (0.60)
The first line indicates whether the server is currently paused, playing
or stopped. The currently playing track name and author are displayed
along with how long since the track was started. The current filter setting
is shown along with how many tracks this includes and excludes from random
play. The random setting, whether on or off, is shown on the last line
along with the random factor setting.
HISTORY
The HISTORY command shows you a list of recently played tracks:
[] The following tracks were recently played:
[] random 37/7 G Catatonia International velvet
[] random 177/9 G Julia Fordham (Love moves in) mysterious ways
[] random 195/13 S Sash! Featuring La T Stay
[] random 155/13 S The Corrs No good for me
[] random 220/19 G Meat Loaf I'd do anything for love (but I won
[] random 129/5 G Roxette Spending my time
[] random 93/13 S Louise Who do you love
[] random 32/5 - Bon Jovi Bed of roses
[] random 191/5 G Deep Blue Something Breakfast at Tiffany's
[] random 172/5 G Free Alright now
The most recently played song is shown first. The list is truncated
to 20 items. The name on the left is the name of the user who queued the
track, or random if it were chosen randomly by the computer (filters
permitting).
TOP
The TOP command shows you a list of the most likely to be played
tracks. It takes one optional parameter that indicates the number of lines
to be displayed, default 20 items.
For example, if you type
TOP 10
You should see something like:
[] Most likely to be played tracks:
[] 1.27% 155/1 S The Corrs Only when I sleep 4:24
[] 1.25% 187/10 S Sacred Spirit Wishes of happiness and prospe 4:29
[] 1.24% 156/14 S The Corrs No good for me 4:00
[] 1.22% 223/21 S Lou Reed Walk on the wild side 4:08
[] 1.21% 117/5 S Queen Bicycle race 3:03
[] 1.19% 108/4 S Natalie Imbruglia Leave me alone 4:23
[] 1.18% 156/15 S The Corrs Little wing 5:09
[] 1.17% 163/3 S U2 Sweetest thing 3:05
[] 1.15% 133/2 S Savage Garden I want you 3:52
[] 1.14% 95/1 S Madness House of fun 2:47
The most likely to be played track is 155/1, 'Only when I sleep', with a
probability of 1.27%. The order of these tracks is determined by the ratings
of the currently logged on users, but the percentage 'weighting' of the best
tracks can be changed using the FACTOR command.
DATE
A very useful command; DATE takes no parameters, and tells you
the date on the server. This relies on the date being correct on the
machine running the server, of course:
[] Local time is 20:56 on Sunday 2nd January 2000
Further information on ratings
CHECK
Quite often Mserv is used to hold real CDs. This means that it is
quite likely that one song may appear on more than one album.
The CHECK command goes through the tracks on the server and
displays which tracks are titled with the same author and name as each other
and that you have rated differently.
For example, if there is a track authored by 'Billie' called 'Honey to
the Bee' numbered 25/10 and it is also in a different album and numbered
199/7, and you've rated 25/10 as GOOD but haven't heard 199/7 yet,
CHECK will tell you:
[] These songs are inconsistent:
[] 25/10 G Billie Honey to the bee 5:04
[] 199/7 - Billie Honey to the bee 3:40
As you can see, these songs are different in duration, one is at least
a minute longer than the other - so it is up to you to decide whether or not
you want to rate them the same.
USERINFO
The USERINFO command shows you how you've rated songs so far:
[] User squish
[] Superb: 5.9% (196)
[] Good: 31.0% (1035)
[] Neutral: 18.7% (625)
[] Bad: 1.1% (37)
[] Awful: 0.3% (11)
[] Heard (unrated): 40.2% (1341)
[] Unheard: 2.8% (92)
[] Index: 100.0% (squish/squish)
The first 5 lines indicate what percentage (with actual numbers of
tracks in brackets) of tracks you've rated the rating level. Heard and
unheard show how many tracks you've heard and not rated, and not even
heard, respectively.
This command can be used on another user to find out how they have
rated. So if you type:
USERINFO jogu
The output becomes:
[] User jogu
[] Superb: 11.1% (370)
[] Good: 52.1% (1740)
[] Neutral: 25.5% (852)
[] Bad: 2.9% (97)
[] Awful: 1.2% (41)
[] Heard (unrated): 3.4% (115)
[] Unheard: 3.7% (122)
[] Index: 85.8% (squish/jogu)
The last line shows an index, which is an evaluation of how compatible
your rating is with the user you've requested information about.
Privileged commands
These commands can only be used by users that are privileged. You can
tell if you're a privileged user by using the WHO command and seeing
if you have a P or M flag next to your name.
GAP
The gap command sets the delay between each track, and is measured in
seconds. The default is a one second delay. The command without a
parameter displays the current setting.
KICK
Rowdy users are not appreciated, and the KICK command can be used to
remove users from the system. The command takes one parameter, the number
of minutes to prohibit them from re-connecting. This defaults to 1.
SYNC
This command synchronises the in-memory database with that contained
within the on-disk database. No new tracks are loaded or deleted, just
the contents are ensured to be the same. Mserv will automatically detect
altered on-disk files when anything is changed for that particular track,
but when you've altered a large number of files this command can be
handy. Numbers of tracks and albums will remain the same.
RESET
The RESET command stops play, ensures all data is saved to disk that
needs to be, removes the in-memory database and resets from the disk. The
currently connected users are not disconnected, but beyond that everything
is re-initialised. This command is useful for when you have added new
albums to the on-disk database. Albums and tracks might change numbers
after this command, it is always best to use SYNC where possible.
SET
The SET command is for changing the properties of albums and tracks.
It is usually done off-line using the mservedit program, which is
both faster and easier.
Note that after changing anything below, lists such as the author
list, genres list, etc. (as used in search functions, etc) will not be
updated until you RESET. The reason for this is that Mserv clients
may have remembered numbers representing the genres, tracks, albums, authors,
etc., and resetting informs them safely of this change.
Albums
ALBUMAUTHOR
This command takes two parameters - the album number and the string
you'd like to set the album author to.
ALBUMNAME
This command takes two parameters - the album number and the string
you'd like to set the album name to.
Tracks
AUTHOR
This command takes three parameters - the album number, the track
number and the string you'd like to set the track author to.
NAME
This command takes three parameters - the album number, the track
number and the string you'd like to set the track name to.
YEAR
This command takes three parameters - the album number, the track
number and the number you'd like to set the track year to.
GENRE
This command takes three parameters - the album number, the track
number and the string you'd like to set the genre to. This should be
a comma-separated list.
Advanced command syntax
One feature that advanced users might like to know about is that any
command that displays rating information can be instructed to display
the same inforation, but for a different user.
Prefix the entire command by the user you wish to view the ratings for
in square brackets.
For example, if you type:
SEARCH block
This could result in:
[] Search results:
[] 199/14 - Blockster You should be... 3:37
[] 203/3 N Soundgarden Block hole sun 4:33
[] 223/8 G Sweet Blockbuster 3:11
[] 194/3 G The Chemical Brother Block rockin' beats 3:23
[] 214/18 G The Chemical Brother Block rockin' beats 4:59
However, if you type:
[fred]SEARCH block
You would then get the same information, but with fred's ratings:
[] Search results:
[] 199/14 G Blockster You should be... 3:37
[] 203/3 N Soundgarden Block hole sun 4:33
[] 223/8 G Sweet Blockbuster 3:11
[] 194/3 N The Chemical Brother Block rockin' beats 3:23
[] 214/18 N The Chemical Brother Block rockin' beats 4:59
This feature can be used with the USERINFO command to display the index
between two users. For example, say your name was squish, and you wanted
the index between fred and joe. You would
type:
[joe]USERINFO fred
Written by James Ponder, last updated
15th July 2000