Book style interpreter?

Technical Development Interpreters
1

Is there such a thing as an inform interpreter that works more like a 2 page book?

2

Yes. It’s built in Silverlight/C# and the source is in the textfyre github repository. There’s one other person adapting it for their uses. It’s not a trivial challenge, but it works very well.

3

Not sure on Inform but Tads 3 lets you use (limited) HTML code, so for example you could put a 2-cell HTML table up to emulate 2 pages of a book and have pretty much what you’re asking for with ease. Should be able to do something like that in Inform 7 as well using GLUX commands. I’m still fairly new to Inform though so I don’t know the code off the top of my head. For Tads 3 it would look something like this:


startRoom: Room 'Introduction'
     "<table><tr><td>This is the left hand side of your 2 pages of text.
                            This is the left hand side of your 2 pages of text.</td>
                      <td>This is the right hand side of your 2 pages of text.
                            This is the right hand side of your 2 pages of text.
                            <a href=\"examine page 3\">(click here to go to page 3)</a></td></tr>
     </table>"
;

DefineIAction(ExaminePageThree)
   execAction(){
     "<table><tr><td>This is the left hand side of your 2 pages of text.
                            This is the left hand side of your 2 pages of text.</td>
                      <td>This is the right hand side of your 2 pages of text.
                            This is the right hand side of your 2 pages of text.
                            <a href=\"examine page 5\">(click here to go to page 5)</a></td></tr>
     </table>";
   }
;
VerbRule(ExaminePageThree)
   'examine' 'page' '3'
   : ExaminePageThreeAction
   verbPhrase = 'examine page 3'
;

// ...and so on
DefineIAction(ExaminePageFive)
   execAction(){
     "<table><tr><td>This is the left hand side of your 2 pages of text.
                            This is the left hand side of your 2 pages of text.</td>
                      <td>This is the right hand side of your 2 pages of text.
                            This is the right hand side of your 2 pages of text.
                            <a href=\"examine page 7\">(click here to go to page 7)</a></td></tr>
     </table>";
   }
;
VerbRule(ExaminePageFive)
   'examine' 'page' '5'
   : ExaminePageFiveAction
   verbPhrase = 'examine page 5'
;