empserver/info

        --- How to build the info pages ---

Make remakes info pages, table of contents and index automatically.
This requires Perl 5 and troff.  To remake just formatted info pages,
run make info.

To remake HTML info, run make html.  This is not done by default.  The
recommended start page is TOP.html, but you may also like all.html.


        --- How to add a new info page ---

To create a new info page, follow these steps:

1.  Decide which chapter to put your info page in:
      Commands     - Empire Commands
      Concepts     - Game concepts
      Introduction - General info about playing Empire
      Server       - Info about the server

2.  Decide what to call your info page:
    - If it's an Empire command, give it the same name as the command
      as listed in lib/player/empmod.c
    - Info names are case-insensitive.  Make sure there isn't another
      one that differs only in case.
    - Make sure your info page doesn't have the same name as an existing
      subject or chapter.

3.  Format your info page.

The file name for a page NAME must be NAME.t.  It's easiest to start
with an existing file.

The first line must be a title header:
.TH arg1 arg2
  - arg1 should be the chapter, one of: Command, Concept,
    Introduction, Server
  - arg2 is the title of your page.  If it contains more than one
    word, make sure it's in double quotes
  - if the info page is for an Empire command, then arg2 must be the
    command name in ALL UPPERCASE.

The second line must be a name header:
.NA arg1 arg2
  - arg1 must be the name
  - arg2 is a one-line description of the info page which will be
    put on the Subject page that your info page belongs to.  It should
    be in double quotes

The third line must be a level header:
.LV arg
  - arg must be a level, one of Basic, Expert

The last line should be a see also:
.SA "item1, item2, ..., subject1, subject2"
  - the stuff in quotes is a list of other info pages which are
    related to this page and info Subjects to which this page belongs.
  - the stuff in quotes must all be on the same line
  - You must include at least one subject (see the Subjects
    subdirectory) in the list (at the end of the list by convention).

The lines in between can contain troff requests.  The following
additional requests are available:

Empire command syntax:
.SY "command <ARGS>"

An Empire command example:
.EX "command args"

No Formatting:
.NF
this stuff
won't be formatted
.FI

Begin paragraph:
.s1

Item in a description:
.L

Fancy troff magic is prone to break HTML output.

4. Format your info page, update table of contents and index
  Run make info html.  If it fails, peruse the error messages and fix
  your info page.


==APPENDIX A  -  What exactly the Perl scripts do==

The scripts read all of the info pages and create a two-level table of
contents for them, organized by subject.  An info page belongs to a
subject if that subject appears as an entry in the .SA ("SEE ALSO")
field of the info page _and_ that entry is not the name of another
info page.

For example, the .SA field of headlines.t contains the entries
"newspaper" and "Communication".  Since there's already an info page
called "newspaper.t", but there is no "Communication" info page, then
the headlines info page is considered to be a member of the
Communication
subject.

The output of these script is a bunch of .t files.  The file TOP.t is
the top-level table of contents and lists all of the subjects.  Then
for each SUBJECT, a SUBJECT.t file is created, listing all of the info
pages that belong to it.


==APPENDIX B  -  The checklist.pl script==

FIXME This does not work at the moment

This little perl script compares the "list" of legal Empire commands
in your server with the Empire commands documented in info.  To run
it, login to your game and type:

  [##:##]% list > list.out

Then, move the list.out file to this directory and run checklist.pl.