I wanna make a TADS 3 wiki / consolidate resources!

Oh! Ok. I misread. It’s @pieartsy!

When I first started looking at T3 (many years ago), what frustrated me no end was that there is no index that embraces all of the documentation.

I’m sure a cookbook (which would be two cookbooks, one for adv3 and another for adv3Lite) would be valuable, and there may also be a need for an overview of how various things fit together, or could potentially fit together.

I have no opinion about the idea of a wiki; that’s not a topic I’m familiar with. But it does seem to me that since there’s already an ifwiki, that’s probably the right place to put new stuff.

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Jim, the cookbook can be one, giving both recipes for the same “dish”, with the bonus of allowing the most direct comparision possible between the two libraries…

(alan3 cookbook sometimes gives two recipes for the same “dish”, one using the standard library and the other without the use of the library; incidentally, this shows alan’s forte, its unique flexibility and easiness in coding unusual parsing/world model)

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

Quite a bit of the raw material for this already exists. There are adv3 and adv3Lite implementations of Cloak of Darkness which can be compared (although the adv3 version seems to be no longer reachable, so I’ve just reconstituted it). IIRC the adv3 and adv3Lite Quick Start guides both implement the same Burglar game, which could be compared. And both Learning TADS 3 (adv3 version) and Learning TADS 3 with Adv3Lite come with a set of sample game illustrating different parts of their respective libraries. I’m pretty sure these are the same (smallish) games so they could be used to compare how to do the same jobs in adv3 and adv3Lite. The adv3Lite sample games (illustrating, for example, how to set out a map, the use of containers and so forth) come with the adv3Lite documentation. The adv3 examples may not be so easy to get hold of anymore since when I tried downloading them from www.tads.org I was refused permission, so I’m now thinking about how to make them more readily available - possibly via my adv3Lite wiki on GitHub.

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so, we started to have problems with Roberts’s tads site, this in itself gives increased importance to our tentative project.

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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oh no! where did you redo it?

I think some are still on the IFArchive so they can be nabbed from there to be rehosted? These mostly seem to be your docs though :sweat_smile:

Also hey, can people help me out and put all the TADS 3 resources they can scrounge up in this thread? Might be a duplicate at first with this reflecting resources that are then put on the website…but hopefully the website won’t be just that for long ^^ I’ve made the first post a wiki so you should be able to edit it – just don’t edit above the line please lol

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You could use TADS 3 - IFWiki for that.

Sure, okay…The website will host docs in the future (with search bars) so it’s not just going to be a site for linking resources, plus I figure if people are already on the forum it’s not as much of a switch between sites to link stuff here. We can mirror it on the IF Wiki too.

Cloak of Darkness · EricEve/adv3lite Wiki has the adv3Lite version followed by the adv3 version.

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Wow—it’s really exciting to see the energy level in this thread. The TADS Renaissance continues apace!

I actually DM’d @Dannii some time back about having my repo join the TADS collective, and I never followed through on that. I’d be happy to do that now, if it makes sense, to avoid the fork. I can also make people interested in working on the repo members (@pieartsy ?)

Another possibility which occurred to me: We could have a sticky “Welcome to TADS” thread on this site, sort of like the existing “Introduce yourself” thread, where new TADS authors introduce themselves. We could use that as a way to point them to the resources they’ll probably need going forward, and also let them know that they’re not alone.

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oh oopsie I already forked it :sweat_smile: I like the welcome to TADS idea!

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Someone had also made the tads.dev website. Unfortunately it’s down now.

yeah…that was our site attempt. I didn’t renew the url cuz we didn’t finish it :pensive: I could tho??

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tads 3 website draft!

ok, very very basic website with a few links. not looking for website critiques right now!! I just wanted to show yall some formatting and how I want the page to be sectioned. trying my best to make it accessible but it’s still a WIP in that respect! making the peripluses accessible + search bar will be a later project.

most of the styling credit goes to Alexis, tho I will need to make some tweaks for accessibility :slight_smile:

while I am not looking for the website formatting/styling/etc crits, if there’s any content that’s not correct, let me know (mainly if something is sectioned as tads 3 language vs adv3 library wrongly, since that got confusing to me)

would people like me to renew the tads.dev domain…?

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Great to see something taking shape!

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Previous post deleted in error.

Yes indeed. It’s good to see something starting to take shape.

I can’t see anything wrongly sectioned. If you wanted to link to the TADS 3 Technical Manual that would be harder to classify since some parts of it relate to the TADS 3 Language, some to TADS 3 concepts and some are specific to the adv3 Library.

As I think Jim Nelson has already mentioned upthread, the adv3Lite Periplus relates to adv3Lite version 1.5, which is some way behind the current version (2.1.1). While this may not matter all that much for many of the features it covers, it will matter for some, so you might want to include a warning to that effect.

I’m working on checking and updating my set of ten short games (each in both adv3 and adv3Lite versions) that are answers to exercises in Learning TADS 3. These illustrate various parts of the respective libraries, so could be part basic recipe book material and part adv3/adv3Lite comparison material. I can give you access to them once I’ve finished the updating exercise.

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yeah I think I’ll try to create a contribution/about page including some How to Contribute instructions soon so people can help add, tweak, and update stuff (open a pr request on github and make a .md file, is what I’m thinking – maybe some jekyll quick instructions to make it easier).

currently a copy of jim’s version of the periplus is hosted, but it uses an older version of HTML so updating it at all (even just refactoring without updates to the content) will be kind of a project.

there’s one main hiccup I can see for adding things in the future (meaning, it’s not just annoying to implement, I don’t know how to do so). pygments (which is the syntax highlighter I linked above, which has support for TADS (and Inform!)) is not supported by jekyll 4. It was deprecated and redirects to rouge, which has no support for TADS. so a custom lexer will need to be made to be able to create new code examples less painfully and manually. I have no idea how to create a lexer! things can always be formatted manually until then. but if anyone wants to help or give tips, that’d be very appreciated! here’s the pygments one for ref.

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Looks great! Do you need any support (monetary or otherwise) for the TADS.dev domain?

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I just bought it again since there seems to be some interest in keeping that url. it’s currently connected to the old wip site but I’ll fix it to point to mine in the morn. pointed it to the new site just now! a lot of the links broke tho whoops

if you wanna toss $20 my way for the domain @BrettW that’d be chill! venmo’s the same as my handle. what other support are you offering?

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