Editing Writing PDA Nodes (section)

=== Writing Nodes Externally ===
Just writing line by line works fine if you're doing something short, but if you're trying to write out anything long it's going to get obnoxious for you fast. This is doubly true if you want pretty formatting, or to update a node later, or to use color... etc, etc.

For bigger nodes, I recommend writing your nodes first in a basic text editor. Notepad works just fine, though I personally love Notepad++ (https://notepad-plus-plus.org/) as a more powerful alternative. It's free, too!

Now, after you write out your node in a text editor, you'll have to enter the text in the game. This IS a tricky process, but luckily there's a few easy ways around that:

==== Using Caors' Tools (Mudlet) ====
1) The lovely Caors has made a great tool to help people enter their text into the game. Check out https://udcolortools.neocities.org/PDALines. The page will tell you how to use it in detail, but the basic idea... All you have to do is copy and paste your text into the left box, hit the 'basic' button, and the right box will output some code you can put into an alias. Inputting that alias will then enter the text into your node. Visual example: https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/y2pckdbx5q7.png

==== Manual Entry (Any Client) ====
If this doesn't work for you, you can also do this by just making sure every line you write has ''''datapad pda append text'''<nowiki/>' at the start, and then entering those lines in a batch. In Notepad++, if you do a Find and Replace with the 'Regular expression' options checked, searching for ^ and replacing it with 'datapad pda append text ' will insert those words in front of every line for you. Here's what this looks like, if you need a visual aid: https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/7ogcbwzqkzy.png

Once you've done this, you can enter the lines manually by copying and pasting them in.

==== Plain-Text Alias (MUSHclient) ====
For MUSHClient users who want to take this path, I heavily recommend setting up an alias with speedwalk delay. (Speedwalk delay can be configured in File->World Properties, then check the window that pops up for Input -> Commands.) Once you've added 'datapad pda append text' to the start of each line in your text file, you can then simply copy the text directly into the alias box with no other effort needed. Visual example of the alias I use and its settings: https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/yrgcnad6po4.png