Release 0.1.3, mostly fixing Mac icons. Same URL.
Not yet, because I haven’t had time to play interactive fictions, but I’m potentially interested.
I think I would definitely use it if it was possible to load my own CSS stylesheet (well, I suppose I could show the contents of the app and edit the CSS in there, but then I should not forget to do it after each update).
Remarks I’ve got:
- There is a small, albeit noticeable delay after entering a command for the first time, but I suppose it’s normal.
- Glulx style defaults are always used, so games that modify them do not look as they are meant to be. Worse, the two custom styles appear as normal text, so games that use them to highlight keywords are unplayable.
- To solve that, it would be great for games to be able to load their own stylesheet, a bit like Gargoyle’s game specific garglk.ini.
Finally, would it be possible to play Inform 6 games that end in .blb? They are greyed out in the open menu.
(also, what’s the name’s meaning? Is it a nonsense word like Quixe and such?)
I think the name comes from Electron (the Chromium framework API thingy) + GlkOte, which itself was derived from RemGlk + GlkOte = Remote + Glk.
Thanks for the comments.
Yeah, this is likely to occur in all games. (How much delay may vary tremendously.) The VM engine uses JIT techniques, meaning that the first time any routine is run, it spends a little extra time to compile a fast version. After you enter the first command, Inform’s parser runs for the first time, and then so do the every-turn rules. So this is a logical outcome.
Definitely on the long-term plan list.
Letting the user specify a personal stylesheet (for all games) is on the short-term plan list.
Sure. I didn’t think there were many in the wild, but it’s easy to add. I’ll also add .glb, which might have been used a few times.
Thanks for the clarifications!
I just replaced the 0.1.3 Mac download package with a new one which is much smaller, and also code-signed. You should no longer see an “App is from from an unidentified developer” dialog when you launch it for the first time.
Instead, you may see an error saying “Not a game file: ENOENT -psn_0_12331970”. Exciting! Just ignore it.
Another thought: I see there are dozens of empty localisation folders in Lectrote files. It would be great to move the about screen, the postcard and every strings to these folders so Lectrote could be translated (I don’t know if it’s really possible, though).
I’d gladly translate it into French!
That localization mechanism isn’t accessible by my code. (It’s part of the app shell, and it works completely differently on Mac, Win, and Linux, anyhow.)
Ignoring that red herring, localization should be possible – I haven’t looked at the problem.
Hi Zarf. I just tried 0.1.3 on OS X 10.11.3
I like the Margin and Zoom options.
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When I downloaded Lectrote, I first tried to launch it directly from where it ended up (the Downloads folder). This gave an error message about something not being available. I’d like to reproduce this for you, but once I had run the app from within the Applications folder for the first time, it was then able to be run from anywhere, so I couldn’t get the error again.
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The main problem I’m getting with the app is that once text reaches the bottom of the screen, a MORE prompt appears in the bottom right corner. At that point, I cannot press anything or click to make that prompt go away.
What I can do is click near to the input prompt, which gives me back my cursor and allows me to enter the next command (though the MORE is still there). At that point, the output from the next command just prints off the bottom of the screen; the program doesn’t jump to follow it. I can manually scroll down with the mouse wheel at that point, and then I am at the point again where I need to manually click near the prompt to be able to enter a command.
The only thing that makes the MORE go away is a screen clear.
I tried two games - Six and Dark Carnival. I did Six first and it uses graphics (the graphics worked well), but then to rule out the graphics as the source of the MORE problems, I opened a purely text game, Dark Carnival, which behaved the same for me.
-Wade
I’ve seen this with Quixe in a browser when the text is enlarged (zoomed). You can unfreeze Quixe by unzooming the text.
If Lectrote is Quixe on Chrome, what if I already have Chrome? - can I just get Quixe and use my existing browser? Could Quixe be packaged as a browser app that I could download from within Chrome?
Yes, I’ve got a fix for that one. (It’s triggering the first time you run it, not a matter of where it’s installed.)
This is very weird (and I’ve never seen it before). But yes, zooming in reveals the bug – thanks.
The MORE should disappear if you scroll all the way down. (Hitting PageDown, dragging the scrollbar down, etc.) In this case that fails. I will investigate more thoroughly tonight.
Never seen it before? Do you mean just in Lecrote? Because I remember it being brought up - and reproduced - in Quixe, and it coming up in a thread. I think I took a screenie, too… I’m sure it’s somewhere around this place.
I was never able to reproduce it in Quixe until now, either. If zooming was mentioned in earlier discussion, I missed it.
The fix turns out to be easy.
Great news. 
And no, zooming hadn’t been mentioned before, as fas as I could tell. Just resizing.
Release 0.1.4 fixes the MORE bug and the spurious Mac error dialog. Various other polishing too.
Font question:
This framework doesn’t let me list the available fonts on the computer and make them all available as display preferences. Given that, I can only offer fonts that are “web universal” or open-source fonts that I package in the app.
(Currently the font-family line says “Palatino, Georgia, serif”.)
What open-source fonts are favorite for text-reading these days? Must have regular, bold, and italic available.
I’d go for Gentium Book and one of the modern free OS fonts (Roboto, maybe Source Sans). But I’m not in touch with the font world. What’s good?
I installed Lectrote and it became my default interpreter, so I’ll probably let it happen unless I’m working with something that needs sound.
I think Gill Sans is free for noncommercial distribution and for some reason I like it a lot onscreen.
fontsforweb.com/font/show?id=1416
Baskerville might be a slightly darker serif alternative to Georgia
fontlibrary.org/en/font/open-baskerville
Here is probably the most standard font list. They favor Garamond
huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/2 … 25650.html
I love Baskerville. Lovelovelove.
Thanks for the replies.
I like Gill Sans but it’s not free. fonts.com/font/monotype/gill-sans
That Open Baskerville doesn’t have a bold or italic style.
I see a free Garamond (google.com/fonts/specimen/EB+Garamond) but it too lacks bold and italic.
Feel free to browse google.com/fonts and name other candidates that fit the bill…
My defaults are Libre Baskerville, Lora, PT Serif / PT Sans (plus PT Serif Caption for headings), Oranienbaum if I’m feeling fancy.