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Complete the manual page for Star Traders
Troff macros are such fun! :-)
This commit is contained in:
John Zaitseff
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doc/trader.6
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doc/trader.6
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.\"
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.\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
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.\" along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
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.TH TRADER 6 "14th June, 2011" "Unix-like systems"
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.\"
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.\"
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.\" *********************************************************************
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.\" Various macros
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.\"
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.\" Allow hyphenation
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.hy 14
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.\"
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.\" Define .URL, .MTO and .FTP, then try to load the www.tmac version
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.de URL
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\\$2 \(la\\$1\(ra\\$3
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..
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.de MTO
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\\$2 \(la\\$1\(ra\\$3
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..
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.de FTP
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\\$2 \(la\\$1\(ra\\$3
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..
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.if \n[.g] .mso www.tmac
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.\"
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.\" *********************************************************************
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.TH TRADER 6 "22nd July, 2011" "Unix-like systems"
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.SH NAME
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trader \- a game of interstellar trading
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.\" *********************************************************************
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.SH SYNOPSIS
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.B trader
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.RB [ \-\-no\-color | \-\-no\-colour ]
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.RB [ \-\-max\-turn=\c
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.IR NUM ]
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.RI [ GAME ]
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.br
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.B trader
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.RB [ \-h | \-\-help ]
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.RB [ \-V | \-\-version ]
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.\" *********************************************************************
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.SH DESCRIPTION
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\fBStar Traders\fR is a simple game of interstellar trading, where the
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objective is to create companies, buy and sell shares, borrow and repay
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money, in order to become the wealthiest player (the winner).
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.\" *********************************************************************
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.SH OPTIONS
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.SH AUTHOR
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John Zaitseff <J.Zaitseff@zap.org.au>
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.TP
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.I GAME
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If \fIGAME\fR is specified as a number between \fB1\fR and \fB9\fR
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(inclusive), load and continue playing that game. If \fIGAME\fR is not
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specified, start a new game.
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.TP
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.BR \-\-no\-color ", " \-\-no\-colour
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Don't use colour for displaying the text in the game. Use this option
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for a \*(lqretro-computing\*(rq look (as shown in the
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.B EXAMPLES
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below).
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.TP
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.BI \-\-max\-turn= NUM
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Set the number of turns in the game to \fINUM\fR. In this version of
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Star Traders, \fINUM\fR must be greater or equal to 10. If this option
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is not specified, the default is 50 turns.
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.TP
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.BR \-h ", " \-\-help
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Show a summary of command-line options and exit.
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.TP
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.BR \-V ", " \-\-version
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Display version information about the program, then exit.
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.\" *********************************************************************
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.SH "EXIT STATUS"
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.TP
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.B 0
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Star Traders finished without any errors.
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.TP
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.B 1
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Star Traders encountered an unrecoverable problem or error; a diagnostic
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message will be written to standard error in this case.
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.\" *********************************************************************
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.SH EXAMPLES
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You can start an ordinary game by running Star Traders without any
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command line options:
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.RS
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.sp
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.B trader
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.sp
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.RE
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If you would like to continue a previously-saved game, simply specify
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that game number on the command line. For example, the following starts
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game 4, if it was previously saved:
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.RS
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.sp
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.B trader 4
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.sp
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.RE
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If you are running under the X Window System, you might like to start the
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game in a dedicated
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.BR xterm (1)
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window (all on one line):
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.RS
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.sp
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.hy 0
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.B "xterm \-g 80x24 \-fa Mono \-fs 18 \-bg black \-fg white \-bc +sb +fbx \-e trader &"
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.hy 14
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.sp
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.RE
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If you would like a full \*(lqretro-computing\*(rq green-screen
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experience, try (again, all on one line):
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.RS
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.sp
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.hy 0
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.B "xterm \-g 80x24 \-fa Mono \-fs 18 \-bg black \-fg '#009911' \-bc +sb +bdc +fbx \-xrm 'XTerm*colorBD: #00FF00' \-e trader \-\-no\-colour &"
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.hy 14
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.sp
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.RE
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.\" *********************************************************************
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.SH ENVIRONMENT
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.TP
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.BR LINES ", " COLUMNS
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Star Traders uses the Curses library for displaying text on the screen.
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As such, it will access these two environment variables if the underlying
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Curses library does so (see, for example, the \fBENVIRONMENT\fR section
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in the
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.BR ncurses (3)
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manual page for in-depth details). It requires a text console or window
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of at least 80\(mu24 in size.
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.TP
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.BR LANG ", " LC_ALL ", etc."
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This version of Star Traders has rudimentary support for locales and will
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use appropriate settings. In particular, numeric quantities will be
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displayed using \fBLC_NUMERIC\fR and monetary quantities will use
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\fBLC_MONETARY\fR. See the
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.BR locale (7)
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or
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.BR setlocale (3)
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manual pages for more details on locale settings.
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.\" *********************************************************************
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.SH FILES
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.TP
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.IB ~/.trader/game N
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Star Traders stores saved game files in the \fI.trader\fR subdirectory in
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your home directory. \fIN\fR is a number between \fB1\fR and \fB9\fR
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inclusive. The game file is scrambled to prevent you or others from
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casually cheating!
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.\" *********************************************************************
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.SH BUGS
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The current version of Star Traders does \fInot\fR handle locales with
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multibyte character sequences (such as UTF-8) correctly. Each byte in a
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multibyte sequence is treated as a separate character. Eight-bit locales
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(such as US-ASCII, ISO8859-1, etc.) work correctly.
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.\" *********************************************************************
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.SH FEEDBACK
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Your comments, suggestions, corrections and enhancements are always
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warmly welcomed! Please send these to:
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.IP Postal: 10n
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\fBJohn Zaitseff\fR,
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.br
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The ZAP Group,
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.br
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Unit 6, 116 Woodburn Road,
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.br
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Berala, NSW, 2141,
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.br
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Australia
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.IP E-mail: 10n
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.MTO J.Zaitseff@zap.org.au
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.PD 0
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.IP Web: 10n
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.URL http://www.zap.org.au/software/trader/
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.IP FTP: 10n
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.FTP ftp://ftp.zap.org.au/pub/trader/
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.PD
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.PP
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.\" *********************************************************************
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.SH COPYRIGHT
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Copyright \(co 1990\-2011, John Zaitseff.
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.PP
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\fBStar Traders\fR is free software that is distributed under the terms
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of the GNU General Public License. You can redistribute it and/or modify
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it under the terms of that License as published by the Free Software
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Foundation, either version 3 or (at your option) any later version.
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.PP
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This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
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WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
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MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General
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Public License for more details.
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.PP
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You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
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with this program. If not, see the
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.URL http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ "GNU licenses web page" .
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.PP
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Even though the GNU General Public License does \fInot\fR require you to
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send your modifications back to the author, it is considered \*(lqgood
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form\*(rq to do so, as this allows your modifications to be incorporated
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into future versions of the program, allowing others to benefit from
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them.
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.\" *********************************************************************
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.SH HISTORY
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The original (and very primitive) Star Traders game was written by
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S.\ J.\ Singer in 1984 using Altair Basic. This was modified for
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Microsoft Basic (MBASIC) running under the CP/M-80 operating system by
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John Zaitseff and released on 7th March, 1988.
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.PP
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Star Traders was then completely rewritten in 1990 for the
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Australian-designed 8-bit MicroBee computer running CP/M-80 on a Zilog
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Z80 processor, using Turbo Pascal 3.01a. Essentially, only the name of
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the game and some of the ideas were retained in this version. Version
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4.1 of Star Traders was released on 1st August, 1991.
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.PP
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In 1992, it was recompiled for the NEC Advanced Personal Computer (with
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8-inch drives!) running CP/M-86 on an 8086 processor, using Turbo Pascal
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2.0. This version had colour added to it in the form of ANSI escape
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sequences; version 4.4 was released on 2nd August, 1993.
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.PP
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The next version came in 1993, when the program was recompiled to run on
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IBM-compatible machines running MS-DOS and ANSI.SYS. Turbo Pascal 6.0
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was used for this. The ANSI escape sequences were slightly different
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under MS-DOS than under the NEC, in that the NEC supported a number of
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extra character attributes.
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.PP
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Star Traders was recompiled again in 1994 for IBM-compatible machines
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with VGA/EGA/CGA video graphics adapters. The output routines were
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recoded to use a \*(lqwindowed\*(rq look. Borland Pascal 7.0 was used
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for this purpose, along with a number of text window manipulation
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modules. Version 5.4 was released on 1st June, 1994.
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.PP
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In 1995, Star Traders was completely rewritten for the 16-bit Microsoft
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Windows 3.1 graphical environment. Microsoft Visual Basic 3.0 was used
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for this purpose. Although completely rewritten, the original algorithms
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were reused from previous versions. Version 6.0 of the game was released
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on 15th September, 1995.
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.PP
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Star Traders was then to languish until almost 16 years later... when the
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game was rewritten once again, this time in the C programming language.
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Version 7.0 was released on @@@ for Unix-like operating systems such as
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Linux. Now you, too, can run this small piece of computing history!
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.\" *********************************************************************
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.SH "SEE ALSO"
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.URL http://www.zap.org.au/software/trader/ "Star Traders home page"
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.\" *********************************************************************
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.\" End of file
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