inform7/notes/release/2-3.md

Release notes for Inform v2.3 (build 4B91)

This release was made on 10 November 2006, before Inform was open-sourced. At that time versions of Inform were identified by build codes in the form NLNN.

This is part of the historical archive of release notes.

Language

• The Glulx story file format is fully supported by Inform for textual works, and we have therefore documented it as a choice available for designers: see section 2.13, now retitled "Limits and the Settings panel".
• The commonest source of problems with Glulx to date has been to do with screen effects such as coloured text and menus, and in particular to do with the extension "Basic Screen Effects", which works only for the Z-machine formats. Because of this, and because we expect that people will want to write other extensions providing unusual effects, two new features have been added:
• An extension can describe itself, in its top line declaration, to be for a limited range of story file formats. This is displayed in the "Installed Extensions" documentation chapter, and an attempt to use an extension with a story file format which does not match will produce an explanatory problem message.
• Individual headings can specify that they contain material to be used only with certain story file formats. This allows extensions, in particular, to provide different implementations of the same idea - for instance, a Glulx version and a Z-machine version - so that the user will get the same behaviour whatever the current project Settings. See the new section 21.6: "Extensions and story file formats".
• The "Release along with an existing story file" option has been improved, and is now fully documented for the first time: see the new section 20.15, "Republishing existing works of IF". This enables Inform 6 users, or those with old games compiled using Informs 1 to 6, to repackage them with cover art and bibliographic data for modern interpreters such as Zoom, Spatterlight or Windows Frotz.
• "When play ends" rules are now run when play ends "in victory"; previously, they were run on every other outcome but not this one. This is a change in the design rather than a bug fix, so it may cause existing source text to change its behaviour: if you are using "when play ends" rules in a work in progress, you may want to test to see if victory is still presented as you would wish it.
• If a scene is created with a name such as "Grand Finale", one can now write rules for "When the Grand Finale begins: ...", etc., equivalently to "When Grand Finale begins: ...". (This is in effect a bug fix, since the same text would previously have created a spurious rule called 'Grand Finale begins' which was never invoked, rather mysteriously.)
• The syntax "otherwise if" (or "else if") is now allowed. This divides up an "if ... begin; ...; end if", for instance as follows:

  	if the player is in the Garden
  	begin;
  		say "The wind rustles the long grass.";
  	otherwise if the player is in the Gazebo;
  		say "The wind catches at the canvas roof of the Gazebo.";
  	end if.
  

  There can be any number of "otherwise if"s within an "if... end if". (Note the lack of a "begin" at the end of each "otherwise if" - the "if" is all one block of phrases.) This new syntax is somewhat experimental, so will be documented in the next build rather than this one.
• The limit on the size of a single I6 code inclusion, previously 10K, has been substantially raised (to 200K): this for the benefit of one or two complex extensions needing to incorporate very long hand-coded I6 routines.

Documentation, examples and extensions

• The use of illustrations is now officially supported. This was implemented in 3Z95 but documented only in the change log; for this build a new chapter on illustrations, Chapter 19, has now been added to the documentation.

Examples

• "Garibaldi" altered to reflect that colored lettering can be used only under the Z-machine.
• "Scooby" reworded slightly to avoid a conflict with the new "otherwise if".

Extensions

• Basic Screen Effects revised to compile correctly under both Glulx and Z-machine; documentation updated; version number advanced to 3. (Thanks to Eric Eve for his contributions.)
• Plurality revised to include additional management for pronoun behavior (providing wrappers for Inform 6's MANUAL PRONOUNS constant and the PronounNotice() routine), and to print "you" when the item described is the player, in it/them phrases; documentation updated; version number advanced to 2.
• Punctuation Removal revised to indicate that it is for the Z-machine only.

Problem messages

• Problem messages have been added for use of '[if ...]' inside an existing '[if ...]', and for '[otherwise]' or '[end if]' used with no matching '[if ...]'.
• Problem message added for actions applying to two non-object values at once, and bug fixed which (sometimes) caused this to generate a spurious problem message on the wrong action.
• Problem message added for "...an X with L", where L is a literal value such as a number, rather than the previous internal error.
• Problem message added for "X is a value that varies", which doesn't say what kind of value it is, rather than the previous internal error.
• Problem message added for relations created between kinds of value with an infinite range, in those cases where this is forbidden because the run-time storage needed would be impracticable.
• Problem message added for compiled descriptions which contain local variables (which will no longer exist when these descriptions need to be used: this resulted in enigmatic "subtype of oversized local" internal errors).
• Problem message added for calling a variable simply "variable", as in "The favourite son is a variable."

Bug fixes

• Bug fixed in which I7 could sometimes crash on being asked to place rule A after or before rule B in rulebook R, when B is not in fact in R: an explanatory problem message has been added to respond to this.
• Bug fixed in which a room could not be called simply "Void".
• Bug fixed in which boxed quotations would sometimes produce array lookup errors. (A bug introduced only in 3V01: apologies.)
• Bug fixed in which text containing an "[if ...]" and then an "[otherwise]" but no "[end if]" and finally a substitution containing an ambiguity not soluble at compile time would sometimes generate I6 code missing a label definition, causing I6 to reject the output of I7.
• Bug fixed in which number variables initialised to negative numbers would be created with the wrong value.
• Bug fixed in which attempts to match a snippet against a non-topic would crash the virtual machine: they now produce a new run-time problem.
• Bug fixed in which reaching inside rules affected removing differently from taking.
• Bug fixed in which RELATIONS testing command gives incorrect output for some object-to-value relationships.
• Bug fixed in which actions applying to two values, and using the word "with" in their names, were not always possible to categorise as named actions.
• Bug fixed whereby "(with nouns reversed)" did not work when applied to actions whose names consisted of a single word.
• Bug fixed to do with "P of the X of Y", e.g., "price of the bag of sweets", being misread.
• Bug fixed whereby "let Name be Value" would sometimes create Name with the wrong kind of value (e.g. a time instead of an object) in cases where the Value part was susceptible to multiple interpretations.
• Bug fixed causing a value consisting of the lone word "entry" to cause an internal error.
• Bug fixed whereby setting a description for generic player-characters would cause I6 to fail to compile I7's output.
• Bug fixed whereby a test scenario specifying that the player must be "in the Holding Cell", etc., would crash due to misreading "holding" as the start of a requirement about what is being held; also, if a capital H is used for Holding, then this ambiguity no longer arises.
• Bug fixed in which the problem message for an object whose name is purely textual would be followed by a spurious internal error.
• Bug fixed in which a wrongly phrased condition followed by a "try ..." would sometimes produce an internal error as well as the intended problem message.
• Bug fixed in which an "accidental clash of names" problem would similarly sometimes cause an internal error as well.
• Bug fixed in which, once again, a problem reported in a "let X be Y" phrase might also lead to a bogus internal error later.
• Bug fixed in which 'Definition:' at the end of the source, with no definition, would crash Inform.
• Bug fixed in which a nameless new phrase, defined by just 'To:', would cause an internal error.
• Bug fixed causing a close quotation mark to be omitted when quoting an incorrect "Understand..." sentence in certain problem messages.
• Bug fixed in which definitions wrongly referring to properties would cause the right problem message to be reported, but on the wrong sentence.
• Bug fixed in which I6 library (as included in 3Z95) failed to compile for purely I6 projects.

Mac OS X app

• On both the Mac OS X and Windows applications, documentation searches now cover the examples as well as the main text, and search results are more clearly displayed.

Windows app

• (Windows only) Images now appear in the game tab when running a Glulx game, rather than the place holder "[Image n]" text. (This brings the Windows application into line with the OS X one.)
• (Windows only) The right-click menu for the source tab now includes a sub-menu to change the size of the text.
• (Windows only) Ctrl-Delete and Ctrl-Backspace in the source tab no longer confuse the undo logic.
• (Windows only) The cursor arrow keys now work in the game tab.
• (Windows only) The toolbar should no longer appear corrupted on 24-bit displays.
• (Windows only) When running Glulx games in the game tab, the stylehint_Proportional flag is now respected.
• (Windows only) When running Glulx games in the game tab, glk_window_clear() now works.