Which are the most popular command line interpreters?

General
1

Text only, no multi-media, for Tads & Inform, for Windows, Mac & Linux?

2

The lists of stable interpreters on IFWiki are set out with the most-recently updated at the top, which you could use as a proxy for popularity, as a starting point anyway.

For TADS: TADS interpreters - IFWiki.

For Inform: Z-code interpreters - IFWiki and Glulx interpreters - IFWiki.

There was a recent poll about Z-code interpreters (at Which z-machine 'terp? - #8 by SomeOne2) though it was criticised for being badly structured:

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3

Text only for Tads: frobTADS
Text only for Inform : Frotz

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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Those lists exclude command line interpreters. Usually very helpful, but not in this case.

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5

They don’t exclude interpreters that must be launched from the command prompt in Linux. I think https://www.ifwiki.org/DMagnetic is an example of that. But you’re right – I saw “command prompt” and guessed he meant the place you type your command in a parser game.

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Well they’re meant to. DMagnetic mustn’t have that box ticked.

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I disagree. The real dividing line is user-friendliness. The data entry form states this:

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."
No answer/unknown
Yes
No

Back on topic, what’s the best way to answer the original post above?

8

Are you asking about interpreters that run in a terminal window, rather than a GUI toolkit? That’s not exactly the same as “command-line” when you’re talking about parser IF.

(Most parser games don’t have multimedia, so the question of whether the interpreter supports it is moot.)

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uh ? both frobtads and frotz are commandline… at least on Linux.

Perplexed regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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Oh, I missed the (other than on Linux) part. Arguably a lot of other interpreters should be added then…

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