Lack of HTML tag knowledge

Authoring TADS
1

I was under the impression that adding this tag

<font face='TADS-Typewriter'> blah blah </font>

would force the interpreter to display that block of text in a monospaced font, regardless of the user’s preference settings. However, I tried to use this tag to display an ASCII graphic (in the event that images aren’t supported) but QTads is still displaying the text in the main (non-monospaced) game font. (<font name = "Monaco">… didn’t seem to work either…)
Thanks if you can help!

1 Like
2

hey john,
that exact code of yours is working for me. which version of QTads are you using? i’m on 3.0.0.

3

oh, and do you have the correct fonts selected in the settings, under Fixed-width Font and Typewriter Font?

4

Sorry, it is working now! I don’t know what was up because I could’ve sworn I recompiled and all… maybe needed to restart the interpreter?
Related question if you happen to know: is the Monaco typeface standard on PC and Linux systems (coming from a Mac-only guy…)? Monaco’s square brackets put together look almost like little squares, which was helpful in my diagram. Is there a way to test whether the player’s system has Monaco font and hardcode that if so, and default to TADS-Typewriter only if that font isn’t loaded? Thanks!

5

Monaco isn’t a default font of either Windows or Linux, I’m afraid.
As far as I can tell, TADS is only able to inform you about the type of interpreter the game is running in, and if it’s able to change the font color (see http://www.tads.org/t3doc/doc/sysman/tadsio.htm systemInfo).
If you’re relying on HTML anyway, could you use actual images instead of trying to fake them?
Would you mind posting, or sending me a screenshot of what your diagram currently looks like?

6

Actually, that pretty much answers my question… if any interpreter that would recognize HTML tags would also display images, then what I’m trying to do is pointless. I did in fact draw the image for those interpreters that display images, I just wanted to know if I had an option for making sure that a non-image-supporting terp would display my alternative ASCII diagram in a monospaced font… but if a non-image terp doesn’t recognize HTML tags, are you just stuck hoping that they don’t try to display it with a non-monospace font?

7

There’s three types of TADS interpreters. Full multimedia terps (like htmlTADS and QTads), text-only UI terps (like Gargoyle), and text-mode terps (like t3run.exe and FrobTADS.)

You only need to worry about the second class: text-only UI terps. Gargoyle for example will only every use the single font configured by the user. And almost always, that’s a proportional font.

The other two terp classes will work fine. Multimedia terps will switch to a typewriter font if that’s what you specified in your HTML tags, and text-mode terps will always use fixed-width fonts for everything by definition, since they run inside a terminal.

However, you should be aware that TADS-typewriter is not actually guaranteed to be a fixed-width font! I mistakenly assumed that this must be fixed-width in older versions of QTads, but in the latest version every font is allowed. That’s because many typewriter-style fonts you can find on the net are proportional, as this is needed in order for them to more accurately emulate the look of a real, physical typewriter font face.

If you want a guarantee that you’ll get a fixed-width font, wrap that text inside <tt> and </tt> tags instead. This will use the interpreter’s “Fixed-width Font” setting instead of the “Typewriter Font” one.

1 Like
8

Thanks RealNC! Good to know how that works… and I had been wondering if there was a tag for specifically fixed-width and not just typewriter.

So basically, Gargoyle people just have to set their terp to a fixed-width font on their own inititiative, if they see a diagram that’s all misaligned?

9

Yes. But most people don’t like to play games in Gargoyle using a fixed-width font. You might want to print a warning about it at the start of the game if it runs within a text-only UI terp:

#include <tadsio.h>

...

if (systemInfo(SysInfoInterpClass) == SysInfoIClassTextGUI) {
    // print warning
}

The three terp classes are:

  • SysInfoIClassText - text-mode/terminal
  • SysInfoIClassTextGUI - text-only but with GUI and usually proportional fonts
  • SysInfoIClassHTML - full support for HTML TADS
10

So helpful, thanks!