Ariadne's Aliases Help

In this document I will explain the following:
The different parts of the Aliases Window, variables used in aliases, how to create an alias, how to copy aliases off the screen, how to add sound to your aliases, and how to look at an alias and figure out what all those black lines, numbers and symbols mean. 
It would probably be a good idea to print this file, login to pirch and open the aliases while you are reading this.

The Aliases Window:

When you click on the Aliases button a new window will open up.
On the left it says Aliases, the names of the actual aliases you have are in the left column. On the right it says Command Definition, if you click on an alias name you will see the commands for that alias appear on the right side. Both of these areas have "quick menu's"
that appear when you right click in each section. The buttons on the bottom: 
add: let's you add an alias, it brings up a text box for you to
type in the new alias' name

delete: deletes the hilited alias

save: saves any changes you have made (i.e. adding, deleting, 
editing or loading an alias)

save as: saves the entire alias file, sort of like a backup

load: loads in another alias file

cancel: allows you to cancel whatever operation you are doing
(i.e. loading a file, etc.)

help: self explanatory 



Variables:

All of the variables below must have a space before and after them in order for them to work properly, with the exception of the first one, it does not have a space before it.
 
/me = inserts your nickname in an action and is used at the
	beginning of a line only
example: if I typed  /me loves Pirch  it would look like this Ariadne loves Pirch

$snick = inserts the nickname of the person you left click on into
	the alias when you play it
	example: if I had an alias that said /me loves $snick
	and I clicked on someone called Merlin it would look like this
	Ariadne loves Merlin 

*1 = this is used to insert text into an alias, you would type the
	/aliasname and your text
	example: let's say my alias is called colddrink, it would look like 
	/me gives $snick a nice cold glass of *1
	after I click on a nick I would type /colddrink coke
	It would look like this
	Ariadne gives Merlin a nice cold glass of coke

$? = when you use this in an alias it will open a text box on your 
	screen for you to type in
	example: we'll use the above alias but instead of using *1
	we'll replace that with $?, it will look like this /me gives $snick 
a nice cold glass of $?	Now when we type /colddrink and hit
 enter a text box will open for you to type in the drink

/me = this will insert your nickname into an alias without using an 
	action
	example: As usual, $me is being an angel!
	It would look like As usual, Ariadne is being an angel!

# : this will insert the name of whatever channel you are in into 
	the alias
	example: $snick I just love it when you are here in #
	It will look like this
	Merlin I just love it when you are here in #Pirch

$time : this will insert the time into an alias 
	example: At the beep the time will be $time

$day : this will insert the day into an alias
	example: It is $day , $time here in Georgia.

$date : this will insert the date into an alias
	example: Today's date is $date

Creating an Alias

We are going to make a simple alias to tell everyone where you are from, so you don't have to type it in every time someone asks you.

1.  Click the Aliases button on the Pirch button bar.
2.  Click the Add button
3.  Type in the word from (all aliases must have a name with no spaces, you can name them anything you want a number, an F key, a word)
4.  Click ok. You will now see "from" in the alias names list, the cursor will be flashing in the Command Definition area.
5.  type in /me lives in your state . Where it is $time , on $day , $date 
6.  Click save.
7.  To use this type /from and hit enter
8.  Your alias will look like this Ariadne lives in Georgia. Where it is 8:00 p.m. , on Saturday , 1-18-98 

Copying an Alias from a channel screen:

Copying in Pirch is like copying in any Windows program.

1.  Place the mouse pointer in front (one line above is even better) of the object you want to copy (i.e. a picture, a line of text, etc.). 
2.  Click and hold down the left mouse button.
3.  Drag the mouse acrossed and down until all of the object is hilited (one line below is even better).
4.  Release the mouse button. The hilite will disappear, the object is on the clip board waiting to be pasted.
5.  Click the aliases button on the Pirch button bar.
6.  Click Add
7.  Type in a name for the object.
8.  Click ok.
9.  Right click in the Command Definition area.
10.  Choose Paste from the drop down menu.
11.  Click save.
12.  To play the alias type /nameyougaveit  

Editing an Alias:

When you copy an alias from the channel screen you will have to edit it before playing it. It will look something like this in the alias Command Definition area.

 <Ariadne>9,12 Hg Hg Hg Hg{{ Merlin }} Hg Hg Hg Hg


The first thing to do when you are editing is to delete the nickname of the person that you copied it from. In this case you would place the cursor in front of the < and use the delete key until you had deleted my name and the > after it. Do not delete the black line(s) after the persons nickname or you will be changing the alias.
 

Step two is to get rid of the nickname of the person it was played to, in the above case the nick to get rid of is Merlin. There are several ways to do this but the easiest is to leave the cursor at the beginning of the alias.
1.  Right click 
2.  From the drop down menu choose Find & Replace
3.  In the top line type in the exact nickname that is in the alias
4.  In the bottom line type in $snick
5.  Click replace all
6.  Click close
7.  Click save on the bottom of the alias window
8.  Type /aliasname to play it  

Adding Sound to an Alias:

To add sound to the beginning of an alias:
/sound # hello.wav

Change the hello to the name of the sound you wish to play with the alias, change the wav to the sound extension (i.e. mid, rmi, mod).

To add sound at the end of the alias add a space then use the following format, the | (called the pipe) is the shift and the \ key together:
|/sound # hello.wav

Knowing what you are seeing:
Below is a sample alias, after copying it and pasting it to aliases it looks like this:


 4,22,2 $snick 4,21,4 : 4,4.0,0.4,4.4,26,6.8,8.2,2 nice to see ya 8,8.6,6.4,24,4:
 4,22,4 $snick 4,21,4 : 4,4.0,0.4,4.4,26,6.8,8.1,4 nice to see ya 8,8.6,6.4,24,4:
 4,22,2 $snick 4,21,4 : 4,4.0,0.4,4.4,26,6.8,8.2,2 nice to see ya 8,8.6,6.4,24,4:

Kind of scary huh? You don't know what is what. So, let's go through the stuff we see.
 
  these are control codes the first one is either control s or control f, when the alias is played you will know which one by the font that appears, the second one is control k for color

 4,2 these are the colors we are going to see when it's played 4= red text or symbols 2=dark blue background

  this is the symbol that will be red when it is played

 2,2 $snick the first control code here is turning off the font control that created the red symbol, this way the persons nick will display right when it's played
              the second control code is a control k for color, you can see with 2,2 it will be dark blue
              the $snick will insert the hilited nick, but since we have 2,2 in front of it it will appear as a dark blue line, in the second line you can see where the colors are changed to 4,2 so that the nick will be in red

 4,2 this is turning the symbol back on and repeating the first symbol

 1,4 : this is turning the symbol off again and changing the color to balck on red with : being in black

 4,4.0,0.4,4. this is three periods, with the text and background colors the same they will appear as thin lines when the alias is played

 4,2 turning the symbol back on

 6,6.8,8. turning the symbol off and having 2 thin lines, the first line purple the second one yellow

 2,2 nice to see ya   this is changing the color to dark blue, again since the text and background color are the same the "nice to see you" will appear as a blue line.In line two of the alias the color is changed to red.

 8,8.6,6. two more thin lines, purple and yellow

 4,2 turning the symbol font back on and repeating the symbol again

 4,4: turning the font off and changing the color to red the : will appear as a line

If you copy and paste the alias into your file and play it you will see the symbol used was the heart, control s was the font that was being turned off and on to achieve that.

  
Viewing your Aliases.Paf Off Line:

Use notepad, wordpad or MSWord to view your paf file. To do this open one of the word processors, click open, click all files on the bottom, then find the paf file and double click it. Or go to Windows Explorer, Pirch32, double click the paf file, when the Open With box appears choose the word processor you want to view it with and click ok. You can also make changes to your aliases this way, just remember to save as All Files and type in the file extension .paf if it is not showing in the file name line.


Creating a new Aliases.paf file:

Filled up your aliases? Just too big to work with anymore? Why not create a new one? Open a word processor (any one will do but Word will allow you to have a larger file than notepad). Type in one letter, or word, go to File, Save As, type in aliases1.paf, or any other name as long as you use the .paf extension. Make sure All Files is showing on the bottom line, click Save. You now have a new file to store your aliases in.

Loading in another Aliases.paf:

1.  Open the aliases window.
2.  Click Load.
3.  In the Look In window that opens find the .paf file you want to load.
4.  Double click the file.
5.  After you see it load into your aliases window click save.   
























