Inform 6 Standard Library 6.12.5 released

Technical Development Development Systems
1

The Inform 6 Standard Library version 6.12.5 is ready for use. It should show up in http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform6/library/ in a few days.

Version 6.12.5 (5 June 2021)

This is a maintenance release focusing almost entirely on bug fixes.

Bugs fixed

  • Revisted the the problem of the library confusing HER as a personal pronoun with HER as a possessive pronoun. The fix in 6.12.3 wound up creating a new problem.

  • Fixed an oversight or misfeature wherein a return value of true from a description routine would not cause the parser to stop further processing.

  • Fixed a problem with CreatureTest() not accounting for ##AskTo.

  • Fixed a longstanding defect in parsing wherein TAKE KEY when things like “key”, “gold key”, and “ruby key” are present. This previously resulted in a pointless disambiguation question that made it very difficult to take the object lacking an adjective.

  • Changed less-than-helpful messages printed when attempting to WEAR or DROP wearable objects in containers or on supporters.

  • Fixed numerous problems that happen when no_implicit_actions is true.

  • Fixed confusing messages and troublesome handling for DROP, WEAR, REMOVE, and DISROBE when containers or supporters are involved.

Caveats

  • There has been some confusion about references to parse array access routines in Roger Firth’s Inform FAQ at http://www.firthworks.com/roger/informfaq/ii.html. Since that document was written, those routines were replaced with WordAddress(), WordLength(), WordValue(), NumberWords(), etc. as part of the aborted effort to produce Inform 6.40 back in 2006. That work was revived to create the 6.12 line of the Standard Library.
8 Likes
2

That link takes you to the 6.12.4 library. Is this the correct link or has the file been lost in limbo somewhere?

3

Not quite Limbo, but Purgatory. The Library should arrive in its usual place in a few days. In the meantime, you can download it from https://661.org/proj/if/.

1 Like
4

Thanks David.

5

When using Inform 6.35 & the 6.12.5 library, I get the following error when trying to compile my game.

Inform 6.35 for Win32 (22nd May 2021)
C:\informpack\lib\base\linklpa.h(68): Error: “infix__watching” is a name already in use and may not be used as a new attribute name (Attribute “infix__watching” was defined at compiler setup)

The only part I can find in the referenced file linklpa.h that may be causing this is the section at the end of ATTRIBUTES

#Ifdef INFIX;
Attribute infix__watching;
#Endif;

This is not present in previous versions of the library that I can see.
If I REM these lines out, It all works as expected.

Is this a bug or am I on the wrong track?

6

Could you PM me a minimal game that demonstrates this trouble?

7

The compiler’s -X switch auto-defines both the constant INFIX and the attribute infix__watching. The library shouldn’t need to define infix__watching.

2 Likes