The author of XTads has asked for it to be counted on IFWiki as a “recommended interpreter”. The main difference that would make is that it would appear on TADS interpreters - IFWiki, which is the page that IFDB links to for TADS games.
I’m the author of said software, and I consider it stable and user-friendly enough for new players. It’s a ready-to-run executable - the user does not have to compile it. Please advise, or just go ahead and mark it as recommended.
Here is what the IFWiki form says about recommended interpreters:
Recommended interpreter: Is this interpreter user-friendly enough to recommend to new players? If you answer “Yes,” then this interpreter (if stable) will be added to our recommendations, for example, Windows interpreters. If the user must compile the interpreter from source code, answer “No.” If the interpreter must be launched from the command prompt (other than on Linux), answer “No."
The only comment I found on this forum about XTads is this:
The author says that the interpreter is reasonably stable, yet labels the current release as “pre-beta 19”. In my mind, those two labels can’t go together. So I’d say ‘no’ for now.
I don’t have a “mac” (for me, true macs are the ones with Motorola CPU running MacOs <8), so I can’t say about merits/demerits of XTads. aside the bad choice of name, whose suggest that is a program running under X11.
From the debate here on XTads, seems that is roughly on par with QTads, so perhaps can be recommended for Mac environment (I use QTads as “reference 'terp” in my WIP)
That made me wonder too. There are a couple of ways to use the word “beta” (not yet stable vs not yet feature complete, I think, roughly) but I’m not sure what to make of “pre-beta” here.
Yes that seems to be the case, as it’s been described as stable. I just wondered what “pre” added. Perhaps someone who has used it can comment on whether the features that have been implemented are sufficient (and sufficiently well implemented!) for this to be “recommend[ed] to new players”
So there’s no topic in the forum yet? And only one person has given any sort of personal recommendation? Seems premature to say that it’s recommended then… While there may not be any strict criteria for what IFWiki considers to be recommendation worthy, it should approximate what people are actually recommending out in the community.
I tried it out last night. It’s a good start, but seems to have some notable bugs (for example, the VM reports it supports images, but doesn’t display them). It hasn’t been updated since 2021.
The question about the version numbering is probably due to the author saying “XTads is forever a work in progress.”
FWIW, since QTads is available for Mac, I wouldn’t recommend XTads to a Mac user looking to play a TADS game.
