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Showing help on '$news'
$news
This object is a mail_recipient like any other (see "help $mail_recipient"). One may send messages to it and use the usual recipient manipulation commands (@mail, @read, @rmm,...).
Selected messages on this recipient are ordered in reverse date order (i.e., most recent first) and concatenated to produce the "news" that is printed in response to the player `news' command. Each news item is thus a distinct message. The default $player:confunc checks to see if any new messages have been selected for inclusion in the "news" since the player last read the news.
The property $news.current_news holds the message sequence of messages currently considered as comprising "the news". The following commands are used to change .current_news:
@addnews <message-seq> to #61
@rmnews <message-seq> from #61
@setnews #61 to <message-seq>
@addnews includes the specified messages, @rmnews excludes the specified messages, and @setnews changes .current_news to be the given message sequence. Note that these ONLY change whether a given message is marked as being "in the news" and do not actually add or remove messages from the mail recipient $news.
The procedure for adding a news article is
Send a mail message to *News (#61)
@addnews last to #61
This marks the message as belonging to the current newspaper.
This also announces to any player who have not yet read this message
that there is a new version of the newspaper.
The preferred method for updating a news items is to send a new version of the item, @rmnews the old version and @addnews the new one.
The following ordinary mail commands behave differently
@rmm removes any reference to message from .current_news
in addition to removing the message itself from .messages
@unrmm completely undoes the effect of the previous @rmm;
this includes restoring .current_news.
By default, the newspaper is moderated, however there is the possibility of unmoderating it (see "help MR-access"), letting arbitrary players send mail to it; administrators could then @addnews those items deemed worthy.