First of all, when you 'look' in a direction, you don't get any
echo to indicate that direction, like you would if you were scanning.

Example:

<100%hp 100%m 100%mv 99999tnl> l n
Nothing special there.

<100%hp 100%m 100%mv 99999tnl> sca e
You scan east.
***** Range 1 *****
A cityguard is strolling through here, keeping the peace.
A cat is sneaking through the shadows here.

======================================================================

When you 'scan' it will at least echo "You scan east."

What's the significance? Well the main one that I will point out is that
it gives you a very important bit of text to highlight. For instance,
if you are scanning some place and you get three ranges in each
direction, with each range having three mobs/PC's, that's a LOT of
text, and it is easy to get lost.

I propose that "look" be upgraded so that the above example would
be more like this:

<100%hp 100%m 100%mv 99999tnl> l n
You look northward.
Nothing special there.

This way the line "You look northward." could be highlighted in any hue
granted by your MUD client's technicolor wonder-brush.

Now, to address "scan". I propose that each range contain the relevant
direction when you scan. For instance, the above example would look
like this:

<100%hp 100%m 100%mv 99999tnl> sca e
You scan east.
***** EAST: Range 1 *****
A cityguard is strolling through here, keeping the peace.
A cat is sneaking through the shadows here.

...or something like that. By putting different directional keywords
in there, it enables the player to highlight text and ultimately be
more effective at keeping track of what's going on.

Anyone else with me?

Bizarro I'm helping!