I’m always a little surprised when I remember that Inform isn’t open source, that you have to wait for releases to be handed down from on high, and have no way of tracking progress or contributing. It seems to me a very old fashioned way of developing software, hardly what you would call “agile”.
I was thinking the same thing the other day. And +1 on the comment about waiting two years for bug-fixes.
I mean, never look a gift horse in the mouth and all that. Inform is free software, and Graham Nelson is fully entitled to do whatever he likes with it. But there is an Inform community, and it does include a few actual programmers who could doubtless contribute bug-fixes, or even work on new features.
Maybe they’re doing that already. Maybe Zarf, Emily, and the other wizards of Inform are all busy behind the scenes polishing sundry details on a regular basis. But if that’s the case, then why hasn’t there been an interim bug-fix release?
These days, when a program, any program, goes two years without even a maintenance release, one would not have to be terminally mired in pessimism to say, “Gee, maybe this program is no longer in active development.” I’m pretty sure that’s not the case with I7 – I’m pretty sure it is in active development … but (a) how would we know, and (b) what does “active” mean in this context?
As this is the “latest news on I7” thread, could we please not fill it up with posts saying that there is no new news on I7? If it’s going to be a complaint thread, we might as well unsticky it and let it drown.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Being open source doesn’t automatically mean that the project would attract developers to work on it. It takes a lot of effort to familiarize oneself with a large project’s code to be able to fix even simplest bugs. The IDEs are open source so in theory anyone could fix any IDE-related bug, but to my knowledge so far no-one besides the project maintainers have contributed.
If there are idle developers itching to work with open source I7 code, they are more than welcome to contribute to for example these parallel projects:
Speaking of which, it occurs to me to point out that many of the uservoice requests have to do with IDE changes, some of them specific to Windows or Linux; so people who wanted to address those via the open source projects might want to search
for the term IDE and see whether anything strikes their fancy to help with. Elsewhere, we habitually tag with “VW” any uservoice items for which volunteer help would be welcome.
Has there been any further updates on the next release? I couldn’t find anything more up to date.
Thanks!
Nothing since April.
If there were a further update, you would see it in this post. That’s why it’s stickied.
That’s funny… I think I subconsciously assumed that meant vaporware was going to do it. 
I’m sorta new at Inform 7, I just started learning how to create my own text adventures. I can say without a doubt the current handbook has proven to be “a lot” of help. I can’t believe how much I’ve learnt in so little time. I’m still struggling with a few things, but as I have before, i’ll most likely find the answers i’m looking for. Some help has come from the handbook, some from these forums and some information has came from personal handbooks by other authors on Inform 7.
I commend you guys for what you’re doing, it can’t be easy to keep everyone pleased. When I found Inform 7 not long ago, and I started coding and creating my first adventure, I knew I had found what I had been looking for, without even realizing I was looking for it. I can’t possibly be more addicted, motivated and determined to create anything else.
I remember playing the old school adventures with my grandmother back in the day (I’m only 34 I didn’t play then in the 70’s but my grandmother had most text adventures that had ever been created), including Will Crowther’s “Adventure”. Scott Adam’s “Adventure Land” and many others produced by Infocom, including the Zork series. Also some from Legend Entertainment and other companies.
I had just recently got the idea to play them again, but while in search, I found Inform 7 and thought, “Why play them when I can create my own!” Cheers and keep up the good work guys!
Do you know when source-codes are released?
Graham has said that he will release the I7 source code at some point in the future, but he has not said when.
Ok anyone think there will be Christmas update? New year’s? Guy Fawke’s night 2014?
This is supposed to be a news post – that’s why it’s stickied. Can we do speculation in a different thread?
Except … there is routinely very little news. I would personally de-sticky the thread and only actually post something when there is news. Also: threads can be locked so that only certain people can post in them. That might help keep the riff-raff (like me!) out of here. 
If this stickied thread had a last-update date of April 29, that fact would be apparent.
Too late now, obviously.
Well, if you look at the first post in this thread, it’s not clear that this started as an “official” latest news thread. So maybe sticky-ing a thread that was not focused on that to begin with was not the best idea? For example, for all I knew looking at the title is that this thread is fed with running commentary on upcoming features: as in, “hey, here’s another update about what’s coming in the next update!”
Again, if it’s a problem: I would recommend a thread called “Official Inform 7 Release News” or something that’s actually indicative. And then I would lock the thread. Only have allowed people to post in that thread and then they can do so when there is actual, official news.
I’m not sure who those people are who can best speak for it. But the above procedure sure sounds logical to me.
Guys, every time you post here, I get a notification on my e-mail, and I think that there’s news about the update.
Also, I was under the impression this is how it was supposed to work, And if you don’t get notified, then at least you’d see “New reply on this topic”.
So far this thread’s worked fine so far, and if we keep it clean and do as zarf suggests, there’ll be no more heartbreaks. 
I split off the discussion and locked the original topic. When there is an update we will make sure you all see it!