Custom Banner and Version extension

Authoring Inform 7
1

Another day, another extension: Custom Banner and Version. I’ve found it a little surprising I haven’t seen customization of the banner text and version command output more often because I find the defaults to… lack visual appeal. So this extension is meant to make it easy to customize them by providing individual phrases that produce each of the individual bits of information in the defaults, so you can put them together again however you like. (The docs discuss which bits are obligatory.)

As the docs say:

This extension kidnaps the printing the banner text activity and the version command and replaces them with exact duplicates.

Including it has no visible effect by default: the point is to be a toolkit so you can customize things yourself. But there are also predefined modestly modified alternatives one could choose with:

Use abbreviated banner text.
Use abbreviated version.

with results like so:

Banner Day
An extension example by Zed Lopez

Made with Inform 7 6M62 / I6 6.36 / I6T 6/12N

Lab

>version

Banner Day
An extension example by Zed Lopez
Release 1/220215
IFID: C1BA3705-8444-4887-B03B-880F32CFB1DB

Made with Inform 7 6M62 / I6 6.36 / I6T 6/12N
Standard Rules version 3/120430 by Graham Nelson
Custom Banner and Version version 1/220215 by Zed Lopez

Also, the extension has a say bibliographic details phrase that produces text close to equivalent to the “library card” in the Project Index.

5 Likes
2

Some overlap with Stephen Granade’s Extended Banner, in the public library, but I think yours breaks things up a bit further. Which is probably better. After all, I usually add Extended Banner, then have to hack it a bit.

-Wade

1 Like
3

Yup. I knew Extended Banner existed, but as you say, it’s less granular.

This extension has a lot more redundancy with @Jeff_Nyman’s Story Substrate. Actually, now that I look again, more than I remembered: the only part of the banner and version info Story Substrate omits is the library serial number (which, as Custom Banner and Version’s docs discuss, isn’t really that interesting).

In hindsight, what value this extension has lies much more in documenting what you’re obliged to keep in the banner text and version command and how you would use the included phrases to customize them than it does in providing the phrases themselves.

Looking at the others has also made me notice mine is also gratuitously glulx-only; I’ll add a Z-code alternative for the game serial number soon.

1 Like