Accompanying Frotz is FrotzStdIO, a version of Frotz which uses only standard input and output (i.e. a shell window). This allows Frotz to take input from a file, or to be used over a network. In the latter case, the output terminal must support ANSI 3.64 character sequences. FrotzStdIO can only be run from the shell, and its operation controlled only by command line switches. In addition to the switches available in Frotz, the following extra switches are available: -f Sets the foreground pen to be used for all text. The default is 1 (which is usually what the shell uses, and is usually black). -w Sets the screen width in characters. FrotzStdIO cannot determine the screen dimensions for any given output (Indeed, if the output stream is a file, there is no concept of a screen.), so this and the following switch must be used to obtain the required display size. The default is 77. -h Sets the screen height in characters. The default is 21. -C Normally CTRL-C will exit FrotzStdIO. If this switch is used, the CTRL-C signal is ignored. -T This switch limits the length of time for a game session. If specified it must be followed by the maximum number of minutes the session may last. Warnings are issued at 5 minutes and 1 minute before the time limit expires. -V This switch can be used to limit the input and output capabilities of FrotzStdIO. Whatever text follows the switch will be used for saving and restoring games, e.g. -Vusername.save and all other file operations will be disabled. If the filename contains a question mark, e.g. -Vuser?.save then up to 10 save files may be used. When the game is saved or restored, the user is prompted for a number which replaces the question mark to give the saved game name.
Converted from AmigaGuide™ to HTML with Kalle Räisänen's (kal@aros-stuff.tk) ag2html script at Sat Apr 10 02:05:47 2004.