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The Set Command

Set or list FIBS variables

Syntax:

set

 

set variable

 

set variable new-value

The set and toggle commands assign values to variables associated with your FIBS user name. The toggle command changes boolean ("Yes/No") variables, while the set command sets other non-boolean variables.

There are six FIBS variables you can modify with the set command, which are described below. To list your current values, type just set:

> set
Settings of variables:
boardstyle: 3
linelength: 0
pagelength: 0
redoubles: none
sortwho: login
timezone: America/Los_Angeles
>

To list the value for a particular variable, type set variable:

> set redoubles
Value of 'redoubles' is none
>

To set a variable to a new value, type set variable new-value:

> set redoubles 2
Value of 'redoubles' set to 2.
>

You can abbreviate the name of the variable, eg set b 3 instead of set boardstyle 3.

FIBS Variables

The boardstyle variable

The backgammon server can display the backgammon board in three different styles. You can choose among these by setting the boardstyle variable to 1, 2, or 3. The three styles are:

1,2: are nearly identical. Style 2 adds 2 more lines than style 1 to display the board.

3: doesn't display a human readable board (for most humans :-), but a couple of numbers representing the board. The help on 'rawboard' explains the meaning of the numbers. The previously used toggle 'rawboard' is no longer available.

> set boardstyle 1

The linelength and pagelength variables

Some commands produce more output than will fit on your screen. You can tell FIBS about the size of your window or screen by setting the two variables 'linelength' and 'pagelength'. The pagelength should be set to the number of lines in your window, the linelength should be set to the number of columns (or to a value slightly less than that). If you have a 80x24 screen you might issue the following commands:

> set pagelength 24
> set linelength 79

You should try 78 and 80 for the linelength too and see what you like best. You can then use the save command to make those settings permanent. Using the values from this example FIBS would wrap lines so they contain at most 79 characters and if the output of single command exceeds 23 lines it will print [Return] in the bottom line of the screen. Just hit your return key to see the next page of output, or type any other command to continue without seeing the rest of the output.

The redoubles variable

Indicates the maximum number of redoubles you will allow in a game. The default value is none.

When you play a match, whichever player has a lower redoubles value will determine the number of redoubles allowed during game play.

Valid values are 'none', 'unlimited', or a number between 1 and 99.

> set redoubles 2

The sortwho variable

How the who command sorts its output

The who command can sort its output in various styles. The style it uses is determined by the 'sortwho' variable. Valid values are:

You can set the 'sortwho' variable to one of the above values with the set command. If you want 'who' to sort by name you type:

> set sortwho name

The timezone variable

The 'timezone' variable controls which timezone some commands use for displaying times. The commands that currently support timezones are who, date, last and time. Other commands do not use timezones yet.

To see a list of valid timezone names, type:

> set timezone ?

To set a timezone, type:

> set timezone zone

where zone is the name of your timezone.

Note that some US timezones that appear twice. If your timezone is e.g. EST and there is daylight saving time in your state you choose EST5EDT. But if you live in Indiana you choose EST because there's no daylight saving time in Indiana. There are many timezones in the list; if you aren't sure, you can use one of the GMT+n or GMT-n zones or just use UTC.