Inform 7 v10.1.0 is now open-source

I’m exploring the possibility of compiling games to C# in addition to C. Odds are it’ll be more for personal use than a fully functional thing, but that will work on Linux with no issues.

Compiling to C# is mentioned in Graham Nelson’s Narrascope 2022 talk as being interesting for Unity integration.

Compiling to Nim or Haxe would also be useful, as they both compile to multiple programming languages.

Concur and agree. I actually compile by hand with this commandline magic:

inform/inform6/Tangled/inform6 -v8 -w -~D '$OMIT_UNUSED_ROUTINES=1' $1.inform/Build/auto.inf -o $1.inform/Build/$1.z8

the power of $OMIT_UNUSED_ROUTINES gives a ~328k shell.z8, leaving an elbow space, in my very rough estimate, comparable with punyinform’s minimal.z3 so I guess that a punyI7 is not only feasible, but in a certain sense is already an I7 hidden feature :smiley:

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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I7 10.1.1 was released Sunday (along with the Mac and Windows IDEs, but not yet the final Linux IDE.)

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When you install from the public library in the IDEs do they go to your one “external” directory shared among your projects or do they go to the Extensions directory in an individual project’s materials directory? Or do you have a choice? If they go to a common directory, the following is an important warning. If they can go to the materials directory and that’s what you’ve been doing, it’s not.

Though the IDEs let you use the 10.1 or 9.3/6M62 compilers (or 9.2/6L38 or 9.1/6L02 if you really want), they only support one External directory and the Public Library is pointing only to extensions for 10.1, most of which would not compile with previous versions. So if you have an existing 9.3 project that relies on a given extension you’d installed from the (old) Public Library, and you’re playing around with 10.1 and install the new version of that extension, it’ll clobber the old one and you’ll be unable to compile your 9.3 project again without manually moving some things around.

So if you have existing 9.3 extensions installed in your External directory and existing 9.3 projects, you may want to create another user (who would have its own External directory when using Inform) and let it compile with 10.1 while your original user continues to compile with 9.3.

If your project does rely on third-party extensions (or you’ve written your own extensions with I6 inclusions) switching back and forth between 9.3 and 10.1 in the same project will be a problem. If it’s a straightforward pure I7 project with no third-party extensions (or only third-party extensions that don’t use I6 inclusions) you’ll probably be fine.

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Overall, I like this. I couldn’t get Intest to compile on Windows at all without diving into the Linux Subsystem for Windows rabbithole.

The Windows frontend, though, has a few issues. Starting it the first time opens a splash screen that I’ve never managed to find again, because restarting opens the old dialog. And trying to compile the built in showcase Onyx doesn’t work, as that project is in the Inform 7 install folder.

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Many thanks for the heads up @Zed! I wish someone had told us days ago :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I’ve just been having a play with the Mac IDE. Generally liking, but I can’t see how to customise the story pane appearance. The default font in there is smaller than I am comfortable with reading, and it’s also not picking up my dark mode of my Mac. I can’t find any settings to fix this. So not sure what to do there.

Here is a screenshot, showing the different dark/light appearances I am seeing in the Mac IDE. This is it running my old game Napier’s Cache. It also happily compiled Border Reivers with no trouble, and my umpteen works in progress. I do rather miss the many bits of info re objects etc being compiled - now we just have a simple progress bar. But it works.

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Have now reported the Mac IDE dark/font issue as a bug at the Inform bug tracker. Crikey that website is not very intuitive to use!

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The launcher can be accessed from the Window menu, “Show Launcher”. The shortcut is Shift+F1.

The idea is to access the sample project from the launcher, which will prompt you for a directory to copy them to.

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If you’re one of those who don’t really like the official GUIs and prefer VS Code (i.e. myself and, like, 2 other persons?), I’ll try to update the Inform 7 VS Code extension when I have time.

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I installed a separate instance of the Windows IDE (…\inform_10). When doing so, the new spash works fine. Seems to run alright. though Windows Defender thought GLULXE.EXE was a trojan, which I reported as a false positive. I think the new interface looks nice! It compiled a copy of my fairly large project with only one issue. I used “I” as a variable, and that seems to be reserved now. After changing that everything compiled OK.

I’ll keep working in the old version for a bit but will probably keep testing with the compiler as I go.

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Good catch. It looks like 9.3/6M62 was okay with pronouns as global variable names except it, he, they, she. All of i, we, me, us, you, them, him, her, my, our, your, its, their, his were permitted. Of those, v10 allows only the unambiguous possessives: my, our, your, its, their, his. (Local variable name requirements are more lax.)

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Thank you, David. I glanced at the menu, but I must have overlooked it.

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I have been using the VS Code on the RPi 4 and the command line version of I7. Works well. I7.10 is the first I have been able to use I7 on the RPi. I6 has been working for quite a while.

Thanks for all you do!

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It’s nice to hear of another user! If you’re using I7 on the command line, then an update is not needed for you, I suppose.

I mainly need to updates the paths to the executables and the command line arguments when you compile a story from within VS Code with the play button the extension adds. (Inform 7 10.1 changed some things in that regard.)

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For anyone else trying the new Mac IDE you can adjust the font size for the right pane in the preferences under editing then documentation font size. That changes the font on the right pane in both documentation and game play / story modes. I’ve dragged my documentation font size setting two more steps to the far right, which now gives me comparable sizes between the font in the left source pane and the font in the right story pane. I have suggested in the bug tracker that this preference’s application could be clarified in the IDE. It’s also a little confusing having it lurking within the “editing” tab …

The app’s dark/light etc. mode is under colour (“Colour Scheme”) in the Mac IDE preferences. But at the moment it isn’t applying to the right pane e.g. documentation or story mode. But it will change your source code pane.

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Malwarebytes also did not like glulx.exe. Code should be signed maybe?

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This is probably the same detection as the Windows Defender one that Drew noted above: both he and I submitted a false positive report on that one to Microsoft.

The last time I looked into it, getting a code signing certificate as an individual developer was a nightmare, and I don’t intend to create a company just so I can get a certificate.

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This is another why Linux, FreeBSD and all other opensource OS are the Right Choice…

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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