tvdoc.14
TRIVIA.1 Documentation (MARC&TAA 9/20/76)
I. Getting TRIVIA.
TRIVIA is loaded by typing either TRIVIA or :TRIVIA to DDT.
TRIVIA will check for the availability of the game (see below) and then
load the actual TRIVIA program.
The availability of TRIVIA for non-directory owners is as
follows:
Mon-Fri : 10pm - 9am
Sat-Sun : All day
Holidays: All day
II. TRIVIA passwords
Each TRIVIA player is required to have a password which will
be checked upon each entrance into the game. The first time a player
uses TRIVIA, he will be asked to supply his password. He will also
be allowed to check this password. If the check fails (i.e. he has
forgotten it in the last 5 seconds or has thought of a better one),
he will be asked for his password again.
III. Prompting and user responses
TRIVIA uses a number of different types of methods for eliciting
information from the user. In each of these methods there is a prompt
indicating the type of information being elicited and a SYNTACTIC prompt
indicating the method by which the information must be entered.
This second prompt is not standardly available but can be made so by
typing the VERBOSE command to the TRIVIA command reader (see below).
The meanings of the verbose commands follows:
a. BUFFER: Text terminated by an altmode (but see 'Safety' command).
The following special characters are recognized inside BUFFERs
i. Control-D -- display BUFFER
ii. Control-E -- edit BUFFER (IMEDIT/TECO)
iii. Control-L -- clear screen and display BUFFER
iv. Control-Q -- quote the next character
v. Control-T -- toggle 'Tell answer' mode
vi. Control-V -- toggle Verbose 'More questions' mode
vii. Control-W -- delete the last word
viii. Control-X -- delete the last line
ix. Control-Y -- insert a file
x. Control-@ -- delete the entire buffer
b. FIX: Integer terminated by altmode or <cr>
c. FLOAT: Floating point decimal number terminated by altmode or <cr>
d. SYM: Symbolic input.
The following special characters are recognized by SYM
i. <altmode> will complete a symbol if possible (printing ? if not)
and terminate the response.
ii. <space> will cause completion to take place, but not terminate.
iii. <cr> will cause termination without completion.
iv. Control-F -- print all possible symbols at this point
e. MULT: Multiple items allowed, with SYM.
The following special characters are recognized by MULT (in addition
to those for SYM)
i. <comma> is used to separate items
ii. Control-A -- use all possibilities at this point
Types b-e also take the special characters and handle them in
the same way that BUFFERs do with the exception of Control-E.
A vertical bar between any of these prompts indicates an 'or' of the
specified prompts.
Typing Control-S at any point will flush whatever is currently
happening and return to TRIVIA's command level (see below).
f. Y/N: Yes/No switch. The first character typed is eaten
and compared to Y or N. If Y, the answer will be yes.
If N, the answer will be no. Otherwise, it will ask again
until a Y or N is typed. The only exceptions to this are
that Control-T may be used for 'Want the answer' and Control-V
may be used for 'More'.
IV. TRIVIA data base
The TRIVIA data base is housed in one moby file. This file
is not in human readable format (indeed it is in MUDDLE readable format).
All questions, mail, answers, scores are located within.
For each user, the following data is kept:
a. Last entry into TRIVIA
b. Last time grading was done
c. Pointer to peronal mail
d. Pointer to last announcement read
e. Pointer to next question to answer
f. List of authored questions
g. Tailor information
h. Score information
V. TRIVIA start up program
When TRIVIA comes up, a normal sequence of operations described
below is performed.
This is: Read announcements
Read personal mail
Answer new questions
Make new questions
This sequence is tailorable using the commands SEQUENCE and
SAVE.TAILOR (described below).
VI. TRIVIA command level
TRIVIA has a command level from which all of the available
operations of TRIVIA may be called.
TRIVIA command level prompts with an '@' and has an implicit
SYNTACTIC prompt of SYM.
The following commands exist in TRIVIA.14
a. Announce
Make an announcement to all trivia players. This command is
NOT intended to be used randomly and should ONLY be used if
there is an urgent need to tell everyone something. Its main
use is in announcing changes to TRIVIA. Announcements now
vanish after roughly two weeks.
b. Answer
Answer new questions.
c. Babble
Print comparative scores of the TRIVIA players. The scores
may be sorted on any of the Categories, Name, and Total.
Within this designation, the scores are sorted either on
total points, maximum possible points, percentage
(batting average), or questions (number of questions submitted).
The first call to BABBLE is rather slow but future calls
are very rapid. The first is slow because it loads scores
for all of the players. Thus, future BABBLEs are fast at
the expense of being non-current (see LOAD.SCORES command).
The TINY.BABBLE command (q.v.) performs a similar function.
d. End.teleconference
End teleconference mode (see Teleconference).
e. Grade
Grade incoming mail and read responses to Answered questions
f. Load.players
Recreate TRIVIA's internal list of players. This is useful iff
you want to send TRIVIA mail to a player who has entered the
game for the first time since your current session started. (In
short, almost never.)
g. Load.scores
Load the current score tables into TRIVIA. This must be done
if it is necessary to insure that BABBLE (other than the initial
one) has the most up-to-date score information.
h. Make
Make new questions.
i. New.match
Use the alternative answer interface for matching questions.
The principal feature is that it is possible to change the
answer to the various sections easily. See the 'question'
section for full details. As of TRIVIA.15, this switch will go
away, since the 'alternative' is now installed.
j. No.simple
Toggle a tailorable switch which determines whether simple
questions will be seen. Normally they will be.
k. Peek
Print some information about people presently playing TRIVIA.
l. Print.score
Print the scores (by category) of various players. This will
also print the players' progress, and the number of questions
submitted in each category.
m. Question.print
Print various of the questions submitted by the current user,
with their answers and scores, and a total score for all
questions printed. This is intimately related to
Status.of.question and Summary.status.of.question.
n. Quit
Leave TRIVIA
o. Read.mail
Read the personal mail file. There is no way to save mail
once it has been read.
p. Safety
Toggle safe BUFFERs mode. In 'safe' mode, a BUFFER will
type [Confirm] after an altmode. To terminate (i.e. Confirm),
type another altmode.
q. Save.tailor
Save the current state of switches and sequence as the
state in which future uses of TRIVIA will come up (see section IX).
r. Send.mail
Send personal mail to another TRIVIA user.
s. Sequence
Set the start up sequence for TRIVIA (see section IX).
t. Shout
For normal users, this command is a no-op. It allows the
maintainers to send a message to all TRIVIAs simultaneously, to
be printed when it is convenient for the receiving TRIVIAs (NOT
for the receiving player, necessarily.) Should you receive such
an unsolicited message, please pay attention to it. There is
also a facility which allows the maintainers to cause all
TRIVIAs to go away if that should ever prove necessary; it is
used very rarely, for obvious reasons.
u. Simple.load
Create a new symbol table of the current player's simple
questions, for use by the Simple.print and Simple.update (q.v.)
commands. This is performed automatically the first time either
of the aforementioned two commands is invoked, and is quite
slow. This command is only necessary when simple questions have
been created since the last invocation of Simple.print or
Simple.update.
v. Simple.print
Prints various of the current player's simple questions. The
first invocation may be quite slow, since a simple.load is
performed.
w. Simple.update
Update a specified simple question. See Update.question. There
are separate commands because simple questions are stored
differently in the data base.
x. Status.of.question
Print the questions listed and give their status (how many
people have answered it and how they did)
This only works if you are the author of the question.
y. Summary.status.of.question
Prints the cumulative score for the specified questions. This
is a nonverbose form of Status.of.question.
z. Teleconference
Listen for new personal mail arriving every n seconds and
tell when one has arrived. Teleconferencing is not available
in version 14; it should eventually reappear, probably in a
different form. As of version 15, teleconferencing exists
again; the immediate.read feature has been flushed. Peek
indicates when a player is in this mode by printing a "T" next
to his name.
aa. Tiny.babble
This is like Babble, except that it asks how many players it
should babble on, and only prints out the scores for the top n
players by whatever criteria you have selected.
aa. Update.question
Update a question you have authored. The category and the
value may not be altered.
bb. Verbosity
Toggle verbose prompt mode
[Erret, Evaluate, Play, Recurse are not for users. Beware!]
VII. About TRIVIA questions
The following types of TRIVIA questions are implemented:
a. Long answer
The user is asked to respond by typing in a response.
The author must grade these questions before scoring is done.
b. Multiple Choice
The user is asked to select the correct choice among those printed.
This type of question is scored instantly.
c. True/False
See Multiple Choice
d. Matching
The user is asked to select something from Column A, and is then
asked for a match. The default (obtained by typing altmode) for
the choice from column A is the lowest-numbered item in that
column which as yet has no answer. When all have been answered,
the default action is to end the question. In this method,
therefore, it is possible to change the answer given for one of
the items in Column A, or even to give up on one of the choices.
When you are through, type <cr> or <altmode> to the request for
something from Column A. This type of question in scored
instantly with 1/N credit for each correct match (for N items in
'Column A')
e. Joint
Joint questions have more than one author associated with them;
none of the authors is asked the question. Grading mail goes to
the person in whose TRIVIA the question was made, but all authors
are indicated when the question is printed. Joint questions also
have one of the four types above: if "Joint" is given as the
type of a question being made, TRIVIA will then ask for the type
of question again.
TRIVIA questions are also broken into categories for purposes
of scoring. Users may not opt to answer questions that fall into only
one category or other.
TRIVIA questions have values attached to them by their authors.
Legal values are greater than 0.0 and less than 2.0. In grading these
questions, only scores less than or equal to the given value will be
allowed.
SIMPLE questions have no value in the score. At present,
a simple question is printed, immediately followed by its answer; you
will then be asked for "Nonsense". If nothing is given, no response
will be sent to the author; otherwise the nonsense will appear in the
author's grading mail. Reading of simple questions may be prevented
or reinstated by using the No.simple command. The following commands
are also useful: Simple.load, Simple.print, and Simple.update.
VII. Making TRIVIA questions
TRIVIA requests all of the information required for making up
any sort of TRIVIA question. The following are interesting tidbits
about quirks, etc. in making questions:
a. To indicate that the last choice for a multiple choice, true/false,
or matching question has come, type an altmode.
b. After supplying the information for 'Column A' and 'Column B' for
matching questions, TRIVIA will simlulate asking you the question.
The responses you give will be taken to be correct.
c. To flush a question,
i. In multiple choice, true/false - type Control-R to the
request for correct answer
ii. In matching, type Control-R to any request for correct match.
iii. In long answer, type altmode to an empty BUFFER.
In any case, a NULL question (i.e. empty BUFFER) is a loser.
Also, Control-S takes you back to command level from anywhere.
VIII. Grading TRIVIA questions
One other feature of the new TRIVIA is postponing grading of
any number of questions. This may be done by typing altmode to the
prompt 'Score (out of xx.xxx)'.
Another feature in grading is automagic scoring of long answer
questions when the answerer 'gives up'. The question maker is still asked
to provide a comment for the poor loser, but this is not required.
IX. Tailoring TRIVIA
The status of the various toggle switches (6 currently) and
the sequence of actions TRIVIA takes upon starting up may be tailored
to meet the needs (whims) of TRIVIA users.
The command SEQUENCE is used to set up the sequence of actions
TRIVIA is to take when starting. The possible actions are reading mail,
grading, answering, making, and checking the status of questions, doing
a babble, and printing scores. Up to 9 items may be selected for the
sequence. When the sequence is exhausted, TRIVIA enters command level.
The SEQUENCE command does not become effective until a SAVE.TAILOR command
is given.
The command SAVE.TAILOR is used to actually update the tailor
information in the user's personal area in the TRIVIA data base. It reads
the values of the toggle switches and the results of any SEQUENCE commands
given and saves this information. When TRIVIA starts up, the switches
are put in the correct state and the sequence is performed.
X. Associated Programs
There are, at the moment, three programs other than TRIVIA
itself which may be found useful.
TS BABBLE
Performs much the same function as a Babble on Total, but is
much faster. However, it is not guaranteed to be current if the system
is flaky. The following JCL is appropriate:
V (used in combination with any of the below) means print information
on all players; BABBLE normally gives only those who have
answered a reasonable proportion of the questions.
P Sort on progress
S Sort on total score
M Sort on maximum possible score
A Sort alphabetically
When given no JCL, BABBLE sorts on the percentage.
TS TVPEEK
Looks like Peek in TRIVIA. :PEEK R causes it to go into a loop,
redisplaying every n seconds. "n" may be set by typing numbers between
1 and 9 at a running TVPEEK.
TS CHECK
Determines whether TRIVIA is available. Most useful in
.ddt. (init) files, where it can be invoked with :GUEST;CHECK.
Appendix I. Categories
The following categories exist in TRIVIA.1:
Athletics
Cinema
Events
General
History
Literature
Music
Science Fiction
TV/Radio 