Introducing the Å-machine

Technical Development Specifications
22

Here’s the Å-machine toolkit, version 0.5.1. This is a companion release to Dialog version 0m/01.

Version 0.5 of the specification includes:

  • Optional support for multiple status areas, with the ability to detect which status areas are available at runtime.

  • Optional ability to clear the current div.

  • Optional ability to clear all text that the player has had a chance to read.

  • Words that consist of a single digit are now consistently represented by numbers. This affects line input, keypress input, word splitting, and word joining.

  • Some new opcodes and opcode variants.

  • Updates and clarifications.

Improvements to the web-based interpreter include:

  • Support for an inline status area. Ability to clear the current div. Ability to clear all text that the player has had a chance to read.

  • Ability to view the current transcript without saving it.

  • Ragged right margin by default.

  • Checkbox to turn off hyperlinks.

  • Checkbox to toggle smooth scrolling.

  • Checkbox settings are remembered in local web storage.

  • In the transcript, non-zero div margins become paragraph breaks.

  • Improved remote transcript functionality.

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