Quick Question about (A)

Authoring Inform 7
1

I’ve updated my Notepad extension for 6L38, but Mark Musante tells me it doesn’t meet the criteria for the Public Library. I’m assuming (he didn’t quite say so) that I need to add (A) to my responses. That would seem easy enough, but there’s a hitch.

Not a word is said about “responses system” in Writing with Inform. There are two mentions in the Recipe Book, but neither of them has a word about how to code it. Here’s a portion of a Check rule from Notepad:

Carry out an actor reading (this is the ordinary carry out reading rule): if the actor is the player: if the memo of the noun is not "": let term be the terminor of the memo of the noun; say "On [the noun] [are] written [run paragraph on]"; if term is terminated: say "'[memo of the noun]'[paragraph break]"; otherwise: say "'[memo of the noun].'"; [etc.]
My question is this: Do I have to put an (A) at the end of line 5, even though that text is just the first half of a message that is being assembled? Or do I put (A) only at the ends of lines 7 and 9?

2

The responses system is discussed in chapters 14.10.-14.12. in the manual.

The gist of responses is that printed strings must be marked inside named rules with (A), (B) etc so that the author can easily change them. So the rule would become

Carry out an actor reading (this is the ordinary carry out reading rule):
    if the actor is the player:
        if the memo of the noun is not "":
            let term be the terminor of the memo of the noun;
            say "On [the noun] [are] written [run paragraph on]" (A);
            if term is terminated:
                say "'[memo of the noun]'[paragraph break]" (B);
            otherwise:
                say "'[memo of the noun].'" (C);
    [etc.]

All strings must be tagged this way, even if they’re not full sentences.

3

Thanks. For the record, page 14.10 mentions the use of (B) and ©, but entirely fails to give an example of how they would be used. As Sherlock Holmes once remarked, this makes perfect sense once someone explains it to you.

I would note, as well, that on p. 27.5, Graham gives an example of a simple extension that does not conform to this procedure. Chapter 27 is all about writing extensions, and there is not a single usage of (A) anywhere in it, much less (B) or ©.

Gee, somebody should write a Handbook…

4

Oh is that all it is? Alphabetically label them? I thought there was some secret handshake stuff going on and that my extension just wasn’t special enough.

5

Question then - is it giving all the messages a sequential letter throughout the extension, or just within that one rule?

6

Sequential within each rule.

7

A related question:

What do you do about strings that don’t appear in named rules? For instance

[code]When play begins:
do whatever.

To do whatever:
if X:
do something;
otherwise if Y:
say “Text”.[/code]

As far as I can tell, it’s not possible to add (A) and such after strings like this. Do these need to be converted into named rules instead?

[code]When play begins:
follow the do whatever rule.

This is the do whatever rule:
if X:
do something;
otherwise if Y:
say “Text”. (A)[/code]

Or is (A) only for direct responses to player commands?

8

(A) is for any text that is going to appear in output in an extension; you want the author using your extension to be able to replace all of it. (Consider, for instance, that they might be writing a game in another language.)

So yes, in this case, if your extension is printing something at the start of play, then you should have that text printed within a named rule so that you can label it.

9

Thanks!