Re: Inform: control characters in text


30 Jul 1995 14:28:35 GMT

Julian Arnold <jools@arnod.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> For example, a `^' in text will print a new line. I want to edit it
> to print a new line and indent three spaces. I know I can manually
> cause an indent by just printing spaces, but it makes my source look
> messy!

Inform allows you to define "variable strings" that print particular
text of your choosing (the mechanism is the same as for abbreviations).
For example, you could try this:

Lowstring newpar "^ ";
String 0 newpar;

and then you can have text like

"This is paragraph one.@0This is paragraph two.@0"

However, you now have to be careful with the `print_ret' command,
because it doesn't know about your paragraphing convention and just
prints a new-line with no indent. To get around this, you'd have to
hack the compiler, as someone else suggested.

Having said the above, when text is printed in a monospaced font, as it
is when I played adventure games, I much prefer paragraphs to be not
indented and separated by blank lines.

--
Gareth Rees