--- /dev/null
+Inform 6: Frequently Asked Questions
+====================================
+
+By Roger Firth <roger@firthworks.com>
+
+From <http://www.firthworks.com/roger/informfaq/>
+
+Copyright Roger Firth. Copying and distribution, with or without
+modification, are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the
+copyright notice and this notice are preserved.
+
+You're reading a set of answers to Frequently Asked Questions about
+the Inform 6 programming language, intended especially to help those
+who are novices in this arena.
+
+This FAQ aims to address topics which commonly cause confusion among
+newcomers. However, you shouldn't set your expectations too high; it
+isn't an Inform tutorial, it pre-supposes that you've got a little
+Inform knowledge already and it assumes at least a little knowledge of
+computer programming. Very rarely will these answers give you the full
+story. Generally, they're designed as introductory tasters, providing
+just enough information to illustrate the general principles.
+
+I'm deeply grateful to Sonja Kesserich for making this possible, and
+for her invaluable collaborative enthusiasm in the whole enterprise.
+
+Many people helped in the creation of this document, sometimes
+unwittingly; my thanks for all of the assistance. The Inform FAQ was
+originally maintained by Roger Firth.
+
+1. Setting the scene
+--------------------
+
+**These topics are about understanding what Inform does, and how best
+to learn about it:**
+
+### 1.1 So, what *is* Inform?
+
+From the *Introduction to the Inform Designer's Manual*: "Inform is a
+system for creating adventure games. It translates an author's textual
+description into a simulated world which can be explored by readers
+using almost any computer, with the aid of an interpreter program."
+
+In its simplest possible form, the "author's textual description"
+looks rather like this:
+
+ Constant Story "RUINS";
+ Constant Headline "^An Interactive Worked Example^
+ Copyright (c) 2001 by Angela M. Horns.^";
+
+ Include "Parser";
+ Include "VerbLib";
+
+ Object Forest "~Great Plaza~"
+ with description
+ "Or so your notes call this low escarpment of limestone,
+ but the rainforest has claimed it back. Dark olive
+ trees crowd in on all sides, the air steams with the
+ mist of a warm recent rain, midges hang in the air.
+ ~Structure 10~ is a shambles of masonry which might
+ once have been a burial pyramid, and little survives
+ except stone-cut steps leading down into darkness below.",
+ has light;
+
+ [ Initialise;
+ location = Forest;
+ "^^^Days of searching, days of thirsty hacking through the briars of
+ the forest, but at last your patience was rewarded. A discovery!^";
+ ];
+
+ Include "Grammar";
+
+Needless to say, real adventure games are much more exciting -- and
+much more complex -- than our tiny example. Nevertheless, almost all
+games look more or less like this, and behave more or less in this
+manner.
+
+### 1.2 How is Inform related to Infocom?
+
+Infocom was the company, formed in 1979 by ex-MIT students to
+capitalize on the popularity of Adventure and its imitators, which
+over the following ten years created more than thirty text adventure
+games; many of those are highly regarded, and still widely played
+today. Infocom's games were written in a specially-devised Zork
+Implementation Language (ZIL) and compiled by Zilch into Z-code. A
+Z-code game could be played using a Z-machine interpreter program, and
+many interpreters were written to run on the wide range of hobbyist
+microcomputers then in vogue.
+
+Eventually, text adventures fell from public favor, Infocom
+disappeared into Activision, and the specifications of ZIL and the
+Z-machine were lost. All that remained in general circulation were the
+Z-code games themselves. In an astonishing feat of
+reverse-engineering, a group of enthusiasts known as the Infocom Task
+Force managed in the early 1990s to deduce the architecture of the
+Z-machine by inspecting the contents of these binary (non-text) files,
+and they documented their researches in the [Z-machine Standards
+Document](http://www.inform-fiction.org/zmachine/standards/).
+
+That specification made it possible to create new Z-machine
+interpreters, and thus to play the original games on computers which
+hadn't existed when Infocom was around. There was, however, no way to
+create new games for the Z-machine until Graham devised Inform.
+Although the Inform language is, at least superficially, nothing like
+ZIL, and the Inform compiler is quite different from Zilch,
+nevertheless the outcome of compiling a source game is the same in
+both cases -- a file of Z-code which can be played on any Z-machine
+interpreter. Many Inform programmers view this, the commonality of
+Z-code between their games and the original Infocom masterpieces, as
+one of the coolest features of the system.
+
+### 1.3 When did Inform appear?
+
+The first version of Inform appeared in 1993, and the system has been
+growing steadily in capability and usage ever since.
+
+ Version Date Compiler Library
+ ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------
+ Inform 1 Apr 1993
+ Inform 2 ??? 1993
+ Inform 3 Nov 1993
+ Inform 4 Jan 1994
+ Inform 5 Jun 1994
+ ...
+ Jun 1995
+ Inform 6 Apr 1996 6.01 6/1
+ May 1996 6.02 -
+ May 1996 6.03 -
+ Sep 1996 6.04 6/2
+ Sep 1996 6.05 -
+ Dec 1996 6.10 6/3
+ Jan 1997 6.11 6/4
+ Mar 1997 6.12 -
+ Apr 1997 6.13 6/5
+ Aug 1997 - 6/6
+ Sep 1997 6.14 6/7
+ Mar 1998 6.15 -
+ Dec 1998 6.20 6/8
+ Apr 1999 6.21 6/9
+ Nov 1999 - 6/10
+ Feb 2004 6.30 6/11
+
+Looking at this (slightly simplified) chart, you can see how Inform
+initially evolved quite rapidly, running through five major versions
+in its first three years. Some of those early versions were fairly
+primitive; not until Version 6 did it settle into a form closely
+resembling the system that we use today.
+
+In fact, although the core system didn't change at all between 1999
+and 2004, Inform enthusiasts continue to find ways of extending and
+enhancing that core using a wide variety of techniques.
\ No newline at end of file
projects / inform-resources.git / blobdiff