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9. Chat & Tools

This page describes to additional packages that were distributed with DeepMatrix before, but never documented.

Chat Client

DeepMatrix also features a pure text based chat client, that can be used either as an applet or a standalone application. The class files can be found in the package matrix.chat. To use the chat as an applet follow the principal guidelines for all DeepMatrix clients. A typical html page would look like this.

<html>
  <head>
    <title>DeepMatrix Chat</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <applet code="matrix.chat.Chat.class" width="100%" height="100%">
      <param name="Port" value="6666">
      <param name="Room" value="matrix">
      <param name="Foreground" value="000000">
      <param name="Background" value="669966">
    </applet>
  </body>
</html>

It only supports these four applet options which work like the equivalent ones on the 3D clients.

As a standalone programm the client has the following options:

java matrix.chat.Chat  [-host hostname] [-port aport]

The option host gives the hostname to connect to, default value is the localhost. The option port gives the TCP port number to connect to, default value is 6666.

While in the client, one can switch rooms by typing /roomname at the chat input line. This will take one to the given room, provided it exists.

Tools

The package tools contains some standalone applications that are usefull to debug DeepMatrix applications and develop Bot programms. They are very raw and just supplied as a convenience. Here follows a short overview, details are in the javadoc documentation that one can produce from the source code.

tools.NetListener
NetListener is a little programm that connects to a DeepMatrix server and logs all kinds of events. It also logs updates for avatars that are introduced at runtime. No logging for NetworkStates however. Very handy to log a chat to a file etc.
tools.Bot
A generic Bot client. It reads a configuration file to dynamically load classes implementing different bot behaviours. It handles all the gory details of connecting and handling the network stuff and supplies the bot implementations with the necessary interfaces to work with DeepMatrix.

Examples are the RotBot and the Chatter bot.

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