According to the Public Library page in the IDE, all of my extensions were downloaded and up to date. Yet when I thought it might be interesting to try using Include Common Commands Sidebar by Alice Grove, I had to download and install manually no less than six extensions (by Jon Ingold and Dannii Willis, plus a newer version of one by Emily Short).
Being not entirely computer-illiterate, I managed this without difficulty. But it naturally raises the question in my mind, what’s going on here? Why was the IDE confused and failing to download some extensions?
I’m not sure if Dannii’s rewrite of Flexible Windows (which Common Commands Sidebar depends on) was ever submitted to the Public Library. It may be that the other extensions you mention were being modified at the same time (to be compatible with the rewrite of Flexible Windows). I do not recall what exactly was left to be done on Flexible Windows before it was submitted. More with the documentation, perhaps?
Actually, now that I’m looking at http://www.emshort.com/pl/payloads/, which is where the IDE pulls the extensions from, I don’t see any version of Flexible Windows at all under Jon Ingold’s name. I don’t know why that is.
Plus, Emily’s own … I think it was Glulx Entry Points … is in an older version in the Library. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s the one. I now have v 10/160919. Is that the version in the Library?
Well, whatever it is, it’s more up to date than the Public Library, and there’s a link in its top bar that says “Inform 7 Extensions Library.” To be sure, the “Download” button doesn’t download anything, it just gives you a page of ascii text in your browser, but that’s okay, I know how to copy and paste.
The point is, if you go to inform7.com, there seems to be NO link to the Public Library. I looked. Did I just miss it because I’m old and addled, or is it hidden from users?
FWIW, to use this without copy-pasting, right-click the “download” button and use “save as.”
Yeah, it’s not linked from the front page. You’re supposed to be able to get the public library extensions from within the Inform 7 app, I think. (There was a time when some users had to go to the pl site, because the library was broken in some of the IDEs, but I don’t think that is currently an issue…)
The herokuapp was a page that some of us were doing to try to substitute for the extensions page on the old inform7 website, since that page was mostly extensions that worked with outdated versions. But that has fallen into desuetude too. And the Inform 7 website crashed and was rebuilt in a simplified way, so that page isn’t linked from the front page anymore (I’m not sure if the extensions are out there at the original URLs, but anyway, those would be out of date for the most part).
Generally the most current extensions that aren’t in the public library are somewhere on github.
…so yeah, the extension situation remains something of a mess. I kind of hate to tell you this when you’re just getting back into Inform, Jim. Hopefully when I7 goes open source this will get easier to deal with. (Graham has announced imminent plans to take it open source–more imminent than usual–but presumably it won’t happen until it’s ready.)