The VanCleve.com Terminal is essentially a command line interface to many features of this site. In addition to appearing on the home page, it is available as an executable JAR file, which runs independently of your Web browser. The Terminal is a client (like any other terminal), for which most of its functionality resides on VanCleve.com rather than in the interface itself. When you type a command into it, it sends your command to the Web server, which then sends back a response, and the text of the response is displayed to you. Often the server requires more information before the command can be carried out, in which case you will see a question displayed. At this point, the server expects an anwser to that question, not another command. Therefore it is essentially a "modal" interface. Keep that in mind. In most cases, if you are asked a question but wish to cancel the operation and type a new command, you can simply press <enter>, and the Terminal will return to its normal mode.

Now, many features in this interface are ridiculously superfluous, as I'll be the first to admit. It has a built-in chat client, for example, and not a very good one. Countless other chat clients exist, as you know, many of them seasoned by years of active development. There is no advantage to a chat client built into my Terminal; but lest I be chastised for reinventing the wheel, let me say I added this feature and others primarily as a personal learning experience. So I shouldn't be disappointed if you never use them.

Some features are more worthy, though, and many of those are only available to registered users. The main reason for this is, they depend on a persistent state, which must be associated with each user somehow. Practically any Terminal command which sets an option or adds a bookmark to the Menu applet, does so permanently, so that the next time you log in, things go back to the way you left them previously (if you were logged in then, that is). Because your options (and bookmarks) persist in the Web site's database, they are available on any (compatible) browser, wherever you go.

This document describes all the commands available to any user, even administrative commands only I, the administrator, can use. Access to these commands when using the VanCleve.com Terminal depends on the user as whom you are logged in. If you are using the site anonymously, only a small subset of these commands will be available to you. To see your own specific list of commands, go to this page. It serves as an index into this document.