What Public Library?

Authoring Inform 7
1

Hi all,

I use Inform on Windows with screen reading software, and am having trouble locating the Inform Extensions Public Library, referred to both in documentation and on this forum.

The documentation refers to the library being accessible from the program, in a casual manner which suggests its location should be obvious. However an exhaustive search of the menus and tabs yields only the catalogue of extensions installed on my system. I guessed that the library might be accessed from the extensions tab in the program (CTRL+F8), but I don’t see it there or anywhere else. I know where on the Internet the extensions can be found, so if worse comes to worst I can install them manually, but I’m confused nonetheless.

Am I missing something, or could it be an accessibility bug in the program which doesn’t allow my screen reader to show me that part of the window? Input appreciated.

Kia ora

2

It’s a link within the Extensions area of the IDE. It’s at a lower level than the main link to the Extensions page. I don’t know how your screen reader is set up, nor even whether you’re on Mac, Windows, or Linux; the Mac IDE is not quite identical to the Windows version, so there may be a separate issue there.

If no visually impaired people respond to your question, I’ll research a little further and try to get better information.

3

You’re close. Once you are on the extensions tab, there should be a sub-tab available labelled “Public Library”. I just tried it out and was able to access the sub-tabs by navigating up after switching to the extensions tab (using Windows 10’s built-in screen reader, I did this by pressing CTRL+UP)

1 Like
4

The library is available at this URL: https://i7el.herokuapp.com/

I’m pretty sure you should be able to download individual items there as needed.

5

That is not the URL of the Inform 7 Public Library (which is actually at http://www.emshort.com/pl/, but that’s meant to be accessed from the Inform 7 front-end, not browsers).

6

This makes sense, a little extra exploration with my screen reader’s (NVDA) object navigator shows me that the subtab seems to be accessed via a spin button, and you do usually rotate those with CTRL+up/down. However, even when passing keystrokes through directly to the application, I can’t get it to move me to that tab by doing that, and due to design flaws in the windows interface, the object navigator can’t focus correctly to press the button manually. Very strange, on the frustrating side.

7

Success! The tabs are accessible without the use of the spin button. For the reference of other visually impaired users, they are located to the left of the document content of the extentions tab. They are labelled (from left to right in flat view) ‘?H’, ‘Definitions’, and ‘Public Library’. Thanks everyone.

1 Like
8

I don’t know what to tell you, David. That’s the URL that my search engine returns, and the extensions are indeed at that URL. When my IDE told me all my extensions were downloaded and up to date – though they weren’t! – I went searching, and that’s where I found what I needed.