I have finished squashing bugs in the Inform Library 6/12 and tagged it for beta. I have also gone through the Unix package, updated it to pull in 6.33 of the compiler and 6/12-beta1 of the Library. These may be downloaded from the IF Archive at ifarchive.org/indexes/if-arc … brary.html if you just want the library. It will take a bit of time for the files to arrive there, so in the meantime, see
github.com/DavidGriffith/inform6lib respectively.
The most noticable difference in the Inform6 for Unix package is that most of the includes have been removed. There has been a snit with the Debian people about whether or not Inform6 could legitimately be included in the Debian repositories given all those include files that had no clear distribution license. There is also a problem of bitrot there. I have therefore trimmed down the includes to those that 1) are known to be freely redistributable and 2) can be expected to work with the current compiler and library. Some of them needed altering to make them work with the alternative narrative voices offered by Library 6/12.
Aside from numerous bugfixes, the most noticable change in the Library is the ability to use first-person or third-person narrative voices. Almost all interactive fiction published so far works in the second-person voice. That is, “EAT COOKIE” causes “You eat the cookie.” to be printed. In the first-person voice, this changes to “I eat the cookie”. In the third-person voice, this becomes “David eats the cookie.”. This can lead to all sorts of interesting new flavors of storytelling. I describe this in greater detail in github.com/DavidGriffith/inform … voices.txt
I know there are still Inform6 users out there. I hear from them all the time. Please take a look at the new Library. Unix users, please check out my new package for building and installing the Inform6 development tools. I don’t have the expertise to put together a new Inform6 compiler package for Windows. Would someone please do that for me? This beta will run a week or two. Please let me know what you think and tell me about any bugs you may find.