Re: Limitations of Inform and TADS?


Sun, 12 Nov 1995 13:26:48 -0500

nkg@fun.direct.ca (Neil K. Guy) writes:
> You can't do this with the current TADS runtime. TADS itself does support
> bold type (as you can see in the UNIX ports of the runtime that Dave
> Baggett has done) but not much else, formatting-wise. The Z-machine is
> more flexible. It supports bold, bold italic and italic in addition to
> regular type. Plus you can have that as normal or fixed-width (monospace)
> type, which gives you 8 choices.

I'm going to pick a nit and distinguish between layers of abstraction
here. The Z-machine supports 16 fonts (options of bold, emphasized,
reverse, and fixed-width.) The only requirements are that fixed-width
and reverse be implemented as such.

The interface can deal with that however it wants. MaxZip gives you
most of the options available for Mac fonts. However, it doesn't need
the Z-machine support for that. For example, your input is still bold
(or whatever) in a V3 game, even though the V3 Z-machine doesn't
support fonts.

The point... there is no point. I'm nit-picking.

> Anyway, the reason the Macintosh version of the TADS interpreter won't
> let you see boldface text or whatever is because it doesn't used styled
> TextEdit.

(Secretly, MaxZip doesn't either. I wrote my own styled text engine
for XZip, and just ported it. I don't know if TADS uses TextEdit or
not.)

> As has been noted, MaxZip does a fab job of supporting the Zmachine's
> multiple type styles. It also remembers your type style and size preferences
> between sessions; TADS does not, reverting to Monaco 9 each launch. MaxZip
> also remembers your window size, which TADS also doesn't. (I hacked my
> copy with ResEdit since it was annoying to have a teeny tiny window
> appropriate for Mac Pluses in Monaco 9.) MaxZip has a command history,
> which is a very handy timesaver. And finally, you can set custom text
> colours with MaxZip, though that's not a feature I consider all that
> important myself - black on white is the most readable colour combination
> for my eyes.

And note that I do *not* support the color features of the Z-machine.
I'm not sure how I'd make it compatible with my own color features.

> However this isn't to say that there are things about TADS that I do
> prefer over MaxZip. TADS has some useful commands in the menu bar, which
> I kind of like. TADS keeps the status line in the same window as the
> text, which I prefer to a floating status line (though I acknowledge
> there are times it's useful to have it that way)

I still don't know how to support a unified game window while still
allowing an arbitrarily-resizable story panel. (I get visions of
L-shaped windows. Bleah. And pop-quotes make everything much worse.
Where does the little floating box go when you resize?)

> There are two features that I'd like to see on both interpreters, though.
> First, drag and drop editing and second, zoom boxes on the windows. (MaxZip
> has one, but it doesn't seem to do anything on my copy.

It doesn't do anything. These are both features I want to write.
Someday.

> And, hm, I just
> noticed that MaxZip doesn't revert the cursor to the I-beam when in the
> text window

Fix out tomorrow.

> and that it doesn't support Internet Config's ICeTEe.

You are a funny person.

> Not
> that the latter really matters - I only know of one game with a URL in it
> and it's not even released!) And maybe custom macros would be nice, and
> support for Macintalk speech synthesis so you can entertain your friends
> at unsuccessful parties (though admittedly that might be handy for the
> visually impaired) and the ability to set the filetype for saved textfiles
> from scripts, and speech recognition and maybe some artificial intelligence
> routine that would write my thesis for me so I'd have time to play some
> of the IF contest games, and...)

You remain a funny person. Except for macros. There, I am a silly
person -- the capacity exists; I just never hooked it up. I still
haven't.

--Z

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."