The consoles module is an obsolete module, meant to give Orchids the possibility to print messages on so-called consoles, namely, on remote machines.

This is an extension module, whose sole purpose is to add new primitives to the Orchids language.

The reasons it is obsolete are:

1. The AddConsole configuration option forces Orchids to open a connection to some remote machine, and if that machine does not respond (in particular, if you happen to have no network connection) then Orchids will just sit idle for a few minutes, not detecting any event, with no warning—this is very bad.
2. Connections to remote machines are not secure: not authenticated, not private, nothing (not even reliable).
3. The module served no purpose in practice.

Configuration options

<module consoles>

• AddConsole console-name host-name udp-port: define a new console, whose name is console-name.  This name will have to be passed as first argument to console_msg or to console_evt.  Printing a string on this console will send a UDP packet containing just that string over port udp-port to machine host-name.
  Examples:

AddConsole alert "localhost" 42000
AddConsole warning "localhost" 42001
AddConsole info "localhost" 42002

</module>

Primitives

• console_msg : str, str → int
  print a string on the named console
  • usage: console_msg(console-name, string)
  • returns: 1 (true) if console was found, 0 (false) otherwise
• console_evt : str, event → int
  print an event on the named console
  • usage: console_evt(console-name, event)
  • returns: 1 (true) if console was found, 0 (false) otherwise