Re: Inform Installation Question


10 Aug 95 17:51:56 BST

In article <40as9l$eag@krel.iea.com>, jessem@comtch.iea.com (Jesse McGrew) writes:
> Jon A. Preston (gt5048a@prism.gatech.edu) wrote:
> : BTW - is there a way to create graphics ZIP files like Z6+ or so? Inform
> : seems to have this capability, but is it documented?
>
> I doubt it... according to the docs, you can create V6 files (they're
> included "for completeness") for the extended memory model, etc. but I
> don't think you can actually include graphics. The character-mode ZIP
> won't display them, anyway (now if someone'd like to do a svgalib port to
> Linux, :).
>

You can produce all the V6 assembly-language code with Inform, if you so
wish. The V6 Z-machine assumes that the interpreter has access to a
set of numbered pictures; this is the unportable part, not stored with
the story file, and of course Inform doesn't produce this part.

> : or even better - is there a way to call C functions from within Inform code?
>
> I doubt it as well, since the Z-machine format is infinitely portable and
> machine code is not.

Quite right. If you would like to do so, for a particular project that you
don't mind only working with a specially doctored interpreter, the way to do
it is to, e.g., modify the interpreter to call some routine of yours when,
say, one of the un-needed V6 assembly lines is run into; or when a character
with a wildly-non-ASCII code is printed.

This is as good a solution as you can reasonably expect given the portability
constraints.

Graham Nelson