Where to begin?
First to Graham I suppose. I should say I didn't mean any offense to good
old Archimedes. All machines, in fact, are ruthless--no matter how cute (and
cuddly). It's true, and you don't have to take my word for it; just ask
them! (Though, being ruthless, don't expect a necessarily truthful reply).
I can sympathise with the not wanting to support other manual formats due to
the large amount of work probably inherent in translating them, and I
certainly don't want to pressure anyone to do a lot of extra work. However I
did find Gareth Rees' post interesting where he suggests a more intermediate
format that would easily be output in the two formats (and what an
incredible map was included; a work of art!).
Gareth points out that while TeX is common in the academic community the
"gloomy world of home computers" plain text is virtually the only way to
ensure compatibility. I would like to also squeak a little (trying to to be
too annoying) that with the opening up of the internet, for better or for
worse, the largest bulk of users is fast becoming (if it is not already)
those "gloomy" home computerists!
Again, i wouldn't want to insist on anyone pandering to the whims of such a
sniveling lot as home computerist (like me!) often are, but if one wanted
to make their work easily available to the widest non-technical audience I
really think that perhaps in the future some consideration could be given
to non-tex documentation.
In Bob Newell's post, and another post i glanced at briefly today, I am
informed that TeX is available for the PC. This is something i had no idea
of before this week. I had no idea what TeX was before this week (and I am
not a computer novice). Bob suggests downloading the PC TeX (which he states
--ever so slightly in a wee bit of condescension??--has been available for
PC for quite a long time). I did discover through various avenues of
searching that TeX as available for PC, but even still it took me two or
three days to figure out what the program actually was (emTex), and then
quite a while further just to figure out what exactly I had to download (so
many parts to the package). And fonts. And then there was the days of
figuring out with little documentation what it was and how it might help me.
Finally I got the thing to run by *LEAVING OUT* the environmental variable
it had told me to set. This whole adventure was a *major* headache.
Not to mention that when all was said and done the TeX package was taking up
15 *megabytes* of my very limited hard drive resources. However I persevered
and endured and did what I had to do for love of Inform! (Aw, how sweet <G>)
So what I'm saying is, just even telling a poor, pathetic, home computerist,
like myself, that there is TeX for the PC is probably in most cases also
totally inadequate--they won't know what you mean, the won't know what to
look for, they won't know how to set it up, they won't know how to use it.
(And thank God I didn't have to be paying for my days and days of searching
and downloading megabytes of clues from various FTP sites--many, if not
most, home computerists are not soaking up the internet from university
accounts and have to pay for access to all this stuff--something I find (no
offense) a lot of academic people take for granted).
I did find a very interesting program called TEX2RTF which would have been
absolutely peachy if I could get it to work. It is a MS-WIndows program
which claims to convert TeX documents to Rich Text Format (which is highly
portable among PC word processors and I think Macintosh, at least). Alas, I
could not get the thing to convert the Inform manuals. It spewed out screens
full of some sort of TeX error about macros not being found or something I
was at a gloomy loss of what to make of it all. I think it would be really
admirable if anyone who knows more than I could perhaps take a look at this
program and maybe consider using it to automatically convert the Inform
manuals to RTF for DOS users in the future. If the conversion is good, then
RTF should be a good enough format to handle most of the formatting in the
manuals. This would be, i'd imagine quite an automated conversion and
wouldn't require the extra maintenance Graham doesn't need the head-ache of
handling--if it worked.
Graham also says in his reply that the Technical manual probably would be of
interest only to *real* infocom hackers (implying I am not one, *sniff*
*sniff* -- well, it's true of course, but one day I might be one if I could
read the manual!), and also, now that I have been able with DVISCR to view
the manuals I can say the introduction to the Specifications text on the
history of the Z-Machine is quite fascinating reading for anyone
interested--even if all the actual specifications afterwards are
indecipherable to the reader. Also one is just very curious to see what's
there when all the manuals are together in the directory in the archive.
So, if anyone is still awake and reading, I can tell you I triumphed over
the mysterious gelatinous blob (TeX) and was able to view the documents. Any
other non-techie-type DOS people that need any help in this I will be glad
to help as much as I can (understanding that I don't know a lot!).
Actually that brings up another point. I wonder if these TeX type
confusions I've worked through wouldn't scare away some other would-be I-F
authors who simply can't deal with all the hacking required to get at what
they want (ie. all the manuals--to see what's there--even if it isn't
helpful to them ultimately--one has this nagging feeling they are missing
something!). This is a great shame, because I can't help thinking that the
world could use some more NON-COMPUTER-PROGRAMMER I-F authors--very
desperately, in fact! (No offense to computer programmers, of which I am
one, on a very small scale--I just think non-programmers might bring a fresh
perspective and approach).
I don't want to completely overlook the ascii Designer's Manual currently
available. Although it's confusing (especially in the opening when Graham is
explaining about the "triangles"! Heh, "Triangles?!" the ascii reader
exclaims to him/herself, and then wonders if there might be some dancing
elephants as well). But anyhow, at least that is available and is not
unreadable. And after all, I think one really learns the most from reading
over the sample source code available--once the basics are grasped.
I hope this post doesn't come off as negative or overly critical. I don't
mean to be that way. Just some musings and possible considerations.
**** YOU HAVE WON ****
Oh wait, i haven't won yet! No, not yet. Bob suggested (and not 100
facetiously!) that those who doesn't understand why the Inform/386 won't work
under windows should move to Linux; and then another post added OS/2 as
well. Please, you guys, don't rub it in! I'm a sensitive guy--I may cry! I
only wish I had the system resources to run either one of those two
operating systems. Sigh. Someday after I make my Million Dollars from
producing text adventures (ha! ha ha!) I will upgrade; that's a promise!
I point to the irony, however, of one potentially requiring 32-bit operating
systems capable of creating virtual 386 machines in order to compile
Z-machine interactive fiction using a format a decade old and having a
maximum size of 256k and capable of running practically on an old rusty
ringer washing machine!
And then there's the irony of having to install 15 megs of TeX software and
font libraries to view or print the documents for the compiler to said
Z-machine.
I won't say anything at all about the irony of the worlds plainest and most
primitive PLAIN TEXT interface (plain in appearance, though complex in other
ways!) requiring a complex type-set document to describe it. No sir, I won't
even mention that! Not at all, as potentially humourous as it may be, I will
not mention it. I refuse. Consider it not mentioned!
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Tim Middleton -=-=-=-=<when sense makes no sense>=-=-=-=- 02/23/95 07:42
<Internet: tim.middleton@canrem.com>=-=(Fidonet: 1:229/15)=-={Rime:->118}
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And when I go there, I go there with you
It's all I can do
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Where the Streets Have No Name -U2
--- Snark=Mail All things are beautiful if you love them. --C.Williams