Getting started with TinTin++

TinTin++ Download FAQ Features Forum Install Starting Links Manual Scripts Changes

Getting Started

Assuming you followed the instructions in the Install section you now have TinTin++ up and running. w00t!

One of the next things on your bucket list should be to read the Introduction to TINTIN scripting.

There are some basic things to make life easier on each platform, feel free to check the link for your platform.

TinTin++ on Android TinTin++ on iOS TinTin++ on Linux TinTin++ on Windows

Text Adventure Games

People who are interested in playing text adventure games, aka MUDs, can launch the client and see a random banner for a game to connect to. You can also start TinTin++ using tt++ -g to use the GUI connection manager which comes pre-loaded with several games to connect to. If you're looking for additional games to play, check out the MUDhalla Mud List. If you are on Windows and installed WinTin++ it should automatically launch the client and connect when you click a telnet link, otherwise you'll have to connect using the command interface. Using TinTin++ to play text adventures is a great way for anyone to learn to script while having fun.

Shell Scripting

People who are interested in state of the art shell scripting can use #!tt++ at the start of an executable file if they have TinTin++ installed. Keep in mind that tintin is still under heavy development, so if your script is critical you should use a separate binary and be very mindful when upgrading.

TinTin++ offers many features that are useful for a shell scripter.

It has a php-like scripting language that is designed to be used interactively and dynamically. It provides an intuitive automapper which is useful when working with family trees, displaying spatial data, path finding, etc. It has a built-in easy to use regular expression parser that also allows complex low level PCRE parsing for the tricky stuff. It has a wide variety of triggers and events to highlight, substitute, and respond to incoming data from the terminal. It has easily customizable aliases, macros, tab completion, and input controls. It has many VT100 utilities to handle the rendering of color, UTF-8, screen splitting, buffering, box drawing, as well as converting VT100 to HTML. It has mouse support using a wide variety of events and a link protocol. Combined with VT100 this makes TinTin++ a scriptable alternative to ncurses. It is designed with consistency and flexibility in mind, rewarding creative programmers. It supports various forms of redirection to interact with the shell, directly and indirectly. The entirety of the Linux shell becomes your library.

TinTin++ was originally designed as a MUD client and subsequently it excels in several areas while it's lacking in others. Development is ongoing to address these issues. Help files of interest to people wanting to use TinTin++ for shell scripting are #help ACTION, RUN, SCRIPT, SYSTEM, EVENT, SPLIT, STATEMENTS, COLORS, and DRAW.

Terminal Multiplexing and Demultiplexing

TinTin++ excels at taking multiple input sources and combining them in a single window. Terminal multiplexers like screen or termux are much simpler and have no easy means to analyze or manipulate the data you run through them. TinTin++ allows you to remove data you're not interested in, highlight specific words or phrases, split up data into different segments on the screen, and add mouse handling on top of a program's command interface. Help files of interest to people wanting to use TinTin++ as a multiplexer are #help RUN, DAEMON, HIGHLIGHT, SYSTEM, EVENT, SPLIT, and COLORS.

Read the Manual

Reading the faq and the manual is an unfortunate requirement as TinTin++ is a fairly sophisticated piece of software. Consistency is one of TinTin++'s goals and an effort is made to have everything behave in a predictable and logical manner. Creative problem solving is another aspect and TinTin contains several novel solutions to script design combined with a bare bone interface.