What this patch does:
    Turns your rent files into ascii rent files.  Sometimes it saves 
    space. Sometimes not.  As a cavet, makes your mail (and other notes)
    saveable. Also allows for unique objects at the snap of your fingers.

  What you need:
    Nothing. This is based off stock circle30bpl14. It comes with a
    converter, so you don't have to worry about loosing your old files
    either. We'll get into that below.

  What you'll need to do:
    Copy the patch 'xapobj.patch' into your src directory.
    From within the src directory, type 'patch < xapobj.patch'.
    Fix any .rej files.
    Compile.

    If you're running from scratch (ie, you don't care about previous rent
    files), simply edit the autorun file, so that the line that sets
    FLAGS also has '-o' added to it... example: my line reads-
      FLAGS='-q'
    so, i change it to- 
      FLAGS='-o -q'

    If you're not running from scratch, you'll start up the mud as usual.
    While logged in at LVL_IMPL, type 'objconv' and cross your fingers.
    The objconv program has a memory leak - an easy one too - I'll fix
    it in the next release, its simply all the objects loaded per char.
    You may have problems if you have many characters.

    After that, you may type 'xapobjs' to turn on ascii objects.

    Make sure to alter your autorun file as above - you may want to kill
    your running autorun script (and reboot), else you'll have to keep
    typing 'xapobjs' each time your mud reboots (or crashes).
    

Xapobjs? Why xapobjs?

    Why not?  Actually, 'Xap' is my character name, and to since this 
    started as a quickie project to make mail save without too much
    additional effort, it's easy to grep for the once unique string
    xap, when coding.  You don't like it, figure out regexs...
	%s/xap/_Your_Name_here/g  in vi does wonders.

Anything else?

    Well, sure. I originally wrote this with autoeq.  You'll see multiple
    references to 'locate' throughout the code.  Its a snap to change the
    object saving functions to include the locate code, and once you've
    gotten that, the object load should be cake.

    Oh - Rent bites ass. I never use it myself, it's rough enough if you
    have a balanced mud where getting enough money to buy eq is a hassle,
    much less paying for it on a continual basis. Bleh!  What if I want
    a month off?  Ooookay, this means that rent is undertested.  Er.
    Rather... i assume it works... Haven't actually had the cojones to 
    test it.  Send bug reports. :)

    Otherwise, I also quickly (very) spiffed this up on my mud so that
    duplicte files were created, via the xap_objs global variable being
    set to 2, and using a different file (_charname_.reimb).  Only created
    on save, and a check in crash_load to find out we shouldn't do
    anything besides allocate eq.

		
	As always, mail bug reports, comments, witty sayings, pez, root
beer floats, women, and the like to dughi@imaxx.net.

						PjD
    
p.s.  As per my previous patches, Naw, I don't even care who uses it,
takes credit for, alters, changes, etc.  Go whole hog, have fun.