> Hello Donald.
> Well, I haven't had as much time as I'd like to have played with PawnShop and
> GemTrader.
> But I have come to the following conclusion, "don't fiddle with
the IGM files
> from Linux" the Linux tools, editors etc, might be nicer, than
DOS'es "edit",
> but don't be tempted. UMASK for the dosemu directories must be 007. You can
>delete files from Linux, but don't create files or directories or files on the
> DOS file tree, that are used by the IGM's and LORD.
> You want to change something, start dosemu, do what you want then exit.

Interesting reading, and it reminds me WHY I'm stating in the documentation
for all of
my Lord programs that I can only directly support them on systems running MS Windows.
That's because I have zero knowledge of how Linux works, or does not work, when it
comes to running a DOS door game under that O.S.  I have to wonder also if those
people, sysops in particular, who run Lord programs under OS/2 have similar problems.

Assuming you can use them under Linux, for viewing text files, I can think
of no program
that works better or quicker than Vern Buerg's LIST utility.  And for
editing text files,
I've always been a strong believer that nothing works better than the QEdit program.
So if you needed to edit a Lord text file, say 3rdparty.dat, I would strongly advise
that you only use a regular dos utility such as DOS's Edit program to do that.  As
for the majority of the stuff you said about DOSEMU, to me it is kind of
like Russian .

> So far, I have not noticed any anomalies with the IGM's, including Violets
> Cottage II. Have installed HITS, but have only used it once, and got
"killed"
> for my troubles, might have been different if I had a fairy along. :-)

Regarding Hiding in The Shadows, as long as you pay the Large Man, who I assigned
the name "Conan" to, he will save you from getting killed in the
IGM.  You still will
get beaten up if you get in trouble, say with Leland's wife, but you'll
usually survive.
Conan will heal your wounds once a day, which helps considerably I think.  Having
a fairy is not even necessary with HITS, if you have Conan's protection.  There's
not a thing anywhere in the IGM that works differently when you have a Fairy.

But if you don't have money to pay Conan, in that case, a Fairy is a good
thing to have if you are going into the igm, and doing naughty stuff like
trying to rob
the Vault, or sleep with one of the NPC's such as Leilani in the Gardens.

> LORD 4.07, is unstable, ie. entering the forest more often than not locks up
> the session solid, no timeout nothing.

There are times when I have to wonder if we will ever see a fully stable version
of DOS LORD again.  One also has to wonder if the game is even being
actually supported, since you never see Preslar around the LORD echo for
the past year. But I still like LORD 4.07 beta over v4.06.  The
improvements have a lot to do with that.
One doesn't have to worry about the Hag event or the Jennie code event
causing Lord to crash, like you do with the other Preslar versions, to give
two examples.
But I've never seen the game lock up just because you go into the Forest myself.
It is possible that only happens when the game is played under Linux.

The missing letters you notice in text was something that got fixed in 4.07 beta
well over a year ago.  But it took awhile initially before Preslar got that
done, since
that was one of the most elusive gremlins to find and eradicate.  It can be annoying
at times, using Lord 4.06, if you want to do anything else.  That's because
it (LORD) is
such a memory hog, that it slows thing down to a crawl on most systems if
you also have any Windows programs running like your email program.  

Hope that answers some of the questions you had in the message. Donald.

--- BBBS/LiI v4.01 Flag-5