Thanks for that explanation,
http://sling.dragonsspine.com/dspine/index.php
I was converting the map to a geyser label images, to make it a mostly graphical game. The only parts I end up keeping from the input data: are the user communication and server command text. I just don't have the information as to where to put the npcs, that's my last missing piece.
In the graphical version, I can put about 16 npcs on each map tile, which would normally only be 2 ascii characters on the telnet version. I think the event handler implementation would be about the only way to place the object overlays, since all the intermediate information would be lost if the npc identifiers or map overlays overwrite each other. Can I assume that this format isn't widely used?