Inform 6's current popularity?
albtraum
sticking to it rather than getting too involved in Inform 7. I'm
terrible at programming but I enjoy a challenge.
Obviously, most of the posts on here lately are about Inform 7, and
I'm wondering how accurately that reflects which one people are using.
Has everyone switched but me? If not, why not?
What is your sense of the proportion of Inform 6 users who've
"upgraded" to 7? Is it near-total switchage? Or is there perhaps
another explanation for the preponderance of 7 posts -- for example,
are there still a lot of Inform 6 holdouts out there, but they're just
such old pros that they're not the ones posting questions?
Matthew
There is a TON of information, guides, manuals, past postings, etc on
Inform 6. This greatly reduces the frequency of someone asking
something that hasn't already been asked.
-Matt
JDC
> There is a TON of information, guides, manuals, past postings, etc on
> Inform 6. This greatly reduces the frequency of someone asking
> something that hasn't already been asked.
That was definitely my experience. I lurked here for a year or so
during which I was learning Inform 6 off and on, and I never found the
need to post a question. I could pretty much find what I needed in the
various manuals, etc. as well as raif archives. I started posting here
to ask questions when I started learning Inform 7; since it is a new
(and evolving) system there's less written so far.
And once I started posting, things just got out of control...
-JDC
Al
added an I7 section to his website.
Andrew Plotkin
> I started writing something in Inform 6 about a year ago, and I'm
> sticking to it rather than getting too involved in Inform 7. I'm
> terrible at programming but I enjoy a challenge.
>
> Obviously, most of the posts on here lately are about Inform 7, and
> I'm wondering how accurately that reflects which one people are using.
> Has everyone switched but me? If not, why not?
No, not everybody has switched. If you go back over the past year
(year! wow) you'll find a fair number of explicit "Why I'm not
switching" posts.
> What is your sense of the proportion of Inform 6 users who've
> "upgraded" to 7?
I'd hate to guess. 60%, 70% in this crowd?
You could look at the Z-code entries in last year's IFComp and count.
Although that was early enough that people might have already had
works in progress when I7 appeared.
> ... are there still a lot of Inform 6 holdouts out there, but
> they're just such old pros that they're not the ones posting
> questions?
That is certainly the case. There weren't a whole lot of I6 questions
*before* I7 came out, either. I mean, not nearly as many as there are
I7 questions now. And many of the questions are from people new to IF,
who started with I7.
(I'd guess that the number of *new* IF authors who are using I6, this
year, is quite small.)
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
If the Bush administration hasn't shipped you to Syria for interrogation, it's
for one reason: they don't feel like it. Not because you're innocent.
Hazard Suit
I'm new, I', bad at programming, I see no point in using I6 :-) But I
would agree with everything said above. I6 is better covered - and
maybe it drew more 'programmer'-types who like to find out things
themselves, not lazy people like me who ask everything that springs to
mind.
But I may be wrong there - I think the author of 'Anchorhead' said
something like he learnt writing in I6 while writing the actual game.
Which is, looking at it, quite impressive.
Andrew Plotkin
> I6 is better covered - and
> maybe it drew more 'programmer'-types who like to find out things
> themselves, not lazy people like me who ask everything that springs to
> mind.
>
> But I may be wrong there - I think the author of 'Anchorhead' said
> something like he learnt writing in I6 while writing the actual game.
> Which is, looking at it, quite impressive.
about it.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
Bush's biggest lie is his claim that it's okay to disagree with him. As soon as
you *actually* disagree with him, he sadly explains that you're undermining
America, that you're giving comfort to the enemy. That you need to be silent.
Richard Bos
> I started writing something in Inform 6 about a year ago, and I'm
> sticking to it rather than getting too involved in Inform 7. I'm
> terrible at programming but I enjoy a challenge.
>
> Obviously, most of the posts on here lately are about Inform 7, and
> I'm wondering how accurately that reflects which one people are using.
> Has everyone switched but me?
No.
> If not, why not?
Because Inform 7's way of doing things doesn't sit well with me in
almost every way.
> What is your sense of the proportion of Inform 6 users who've
> "upgraded" to 7? Is it near-total switchage? Or is there perhaps
> another explanation for the preponderance of 7 posts -- for example,
> are there still a lot of Inform 6 holdouts out there, but they're just
> such old pros that they're not the ones posting questions?
Possibly. Or the ones who went over to Inform 7 are the "official"
target audience for Inform 7: people who want to author IF, but don't
want to be programmers (and who, since Inform 7 is still very much a
programming language, are running into the same kind of programming
problems they would've run into, and had problems solving, in Inform 6).
Richard
Andreas Davour
> I started writing something in Inform 6 about a year ago, and I'm
> sticking to it rather than getting too involved in Inform 7. I'm
> terrible at programming but I enjoy a challenge.
>
> Obviously, most of the posts on here lately are about Inform 7, and
> I'm wondering how accurately that reflects which one people are using.
> Has everyone switched but me? If not, why not?
Not that I'm very representative of anything, but I still plan on using
Inform 6, since I hate IDE's and work much better in a command line
based environment. I also happen to use a myrad of platforms and Inform
7 being a Mac/Windows thingie doesn't help.
I also have not ever finished any IF and thus not released anything, so
my preferences might not matter much. ;)
/Andreas
--
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
Andrew Plotkin
> Or the ones who went over to Inform 7 are the "official"
> target audience for Inform 7: people who want to author IF, but don't
> want to be programmers
I'm pretty sure the stats don't support that theory.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
If the Bush administration hasn't thrown you in military prison without trial,
it's for one reason: they don't feel like it. Not because you're patriotic.
Jim Aikin
"Andrew Plotkin" <erky...@eblong.com> wrote in message
news:f0d752$6pv$1...@reader2.panix.com...
> Here, Richard Bos <ral...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>> Or the ones who went over to Inform 7 are the "official"
>> target audience for Inform 7: people who want to author IF, but don't
>> want to be programmers
>
> I'm pretty sure the stats don't support that theory.
Are there stats? Even unofficial, approximate ones would be fascinating to
read, at least if they had some sort of visible source for purposes of
authentication.
I mean, how many (a) power users, (b) neophytes, (c) authors who have
completed games in the past five years are there for each platform?
My impression, FWIW, is that the IF community as a whole is a tiny fraction
of the size of the community enjoyed by freeware apps in some other fields.
But maybe that's just my cynicism creeping in (yet again).
--JA
Jim Aikin
> "upgraded" to 7?
I think "upgrade" is the wrong word. "Switch" would be a better word, as
they're completely different languages. The fact that they both happen to
compile to z-code is largely irrelevant from the programmer's perspective.
If, as would have been more appropriate, I7 were called AdvStory or GNIFL
(for "Graham Nelson's Interactive Fiction Language"), we wouldn't be having
these discussions.
--JA
Adam Thornton
Richard Bos <rl...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>Possibly. Or the ones who went over to Inform 7 are the "official"
>target audience for Inform 7: people who want to author IF, but don't
>want to be programmers (and who, since Inform 7 is still very much a
>programming language, are running into the same kind of programming
>problems they would've run into, and had problems solving, in Inform 6).
It's not totally clear to me that I've "gone over" to I7.
I am, however, writing a work in progress that is vastly larger than
anything else I have done to date in I7.
It's much more *fun* to program in, somehow, than I6 was, and the basics
of geography and basic character interaction (conversation-with-recap
from the manual, basically) go a lot faster for me.
For my *next* big game I'd like to try T3 (or T4 if *it's* current by
then).
My point is, however, that I'm not an "IF author who doesn't want to be
a programmer"--I'm comfortable in Perl (admittedly, a shellish subset of
Perl), Rexx, C (although C always takes me a little warming-up time
before I'm back into it), classical BASIC (don't tell), and sh
(I prefer bash, I can cope with ksh or plain old Bourne shell, and
please don't make me write csh). I can write with the help of the
language reference and some patience, oh, probably another dozen or so
computer languages (this category would be where Python, Java, Pascal,
C++, and Forth go). And give me a procedural language and its manual,
and I can be writing functional, if not idiomatic or elegant, code in it
within a couple days.
In short, I'm more of a programmer than I am a writer, and I find I7 a
delight to use. Yes, it's still got syntax. Yes, my deeply and
horribly nested ifs are very ugly. Yes, it's not obvious how to make
function calls or do recursion in it. However, having a language that's
mostly-declarative rather than mostly-procedural is...really interesting
from an IF design perspective, because most of writing a game, at least
for me (and this may be because I build stage sets, not model worlds) is
declaration, not procedure.
Adam
Adam
Adam Thornton
Andreas Davour <an...@update.uu.se> wrote:
>Not that I'm very representative of anything, but I still plan on using
>Inform 6, since I hate IDE's and work much better in a command line
>based environment.
Me too...and yet, I really like the I7 IDE. One thing that I've been
wondering--but I don't know elisp well enough to attempt--is how hard an
I7 mode for Emacs would be.
>I also happen to use a myrad of platforms and Inform
>7 being a Mac/Windows thingie doesn't help.
I've done a Linux (x86, ppc, s390, armv5tel) and Solaris (x86)
command-line port. There's a rough-around-the-edges but
pretty-darn-good GTK+ port.
If anyone *wants* a CLI port to some other Unixy platform, please,
please write me and say so. If you can provide me with access to that
platform, I will cheerily attempt the port[0], and if you have a
modernish Perl (5 certainly, 5.6+ probably best), a POSIX shell, GCC[1],
and the GNU coreutils (GNU tar in particular), then I'm happy to do the
attempt, if we can work out an access plan that satsifies Graham that
the confidentiality of his source will be respected. The only reason
I've only done the four Linux platforms and Sol10 on x86 is that that's
all that I currently have access to.
Adam
[0] Modulo my Copious Free Time, which varies rather widely with time.
I have a day job that has a tendency to erupt into crisis mode fairly
often.
[1] Variadic macros in the source in some places depend on GCC
extensions, so a straight-up ANSI C compiler doesn't actually do the
trick at this point.
Charles N Cosper
> albtraum <toh...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I started writing something in Inform 6 about a year ago, and I'm
>> sticking to it rather than getting too involved in Inform 7. I'm
>> terrible at programming but I enjoy a challenge.
>>
>> Obviously, most of the posts on here lately are about Inform 7, and I'm
>> wondering how accurately that reflects which one people are using. Has
>> everyone switched but me? If not, why not?
>
> Not that I'm very representative of anything, but I still plan on using
> Inform 6, since I hate IDE's and work much better in a command line based
> environment. I also happen to use a myrad of platforms and Inform 7 being
> a Mac/Windows thingie doesn't help.
>
> I also have not ever finished any IF and thus not released anything, so my
> preferences might not matter much. ;)
>
> /Andreas
If you want CLI, look no further than the Linux interface written by Adam
Thornton. No windows here; it doesn't even have the editor built in!
Actually, Adam's interface is perfectly functional, (Thanks, Adam!) in
that you can create a working game, try it out, release it. It's only
missing the "advanced" bells and whistles (the skein, the fancy
transcript, integrated documentation, etc.) that you get from the IDEs. I
must say, though, that it seems to compile the game much faster than the
Windows IDE (can't speak about the Mac port) running on comparable
hardware.
In the short amount of time that I've used the Windows IDE, I have seen
how something like the skein or the transcript might be useful to some
people.
As far as I6 vs. I7, I think I7 will allow more people to get involved in
writing IF. People who otherwise might balk at a programming language
like I6 might decide to take a chance with I7. It's still a programming
language, but it's wrapped in a (deceptive?) pretty package.
For many of the questions on the newsgroup that I've seen (in the last
2 weeks), the answer has been in the documentation, but the existing
documentation is not user-friendly for the purposes of finding the answer
to your question. It's a helpful resource to introduce things the first
time, but if you want to know where how to, for example, re-define what
all includes, you either have to grep the whole directory tree or wander
around the chapters ("Is it an action? If so, basic or advanced? Is it an
activity? Maybe it's in understanding?"). (It's at 17.28, incidentally. It
finally stuck the 5th or 6th time I went to look for it.) Perhaps the
index needs to expand beyond the examples to include the topics of each
individual section?
That's my two cents. With that and a dime, you can make a phone call
(twenty years ago).
Charles
Emily Short
> "Andrew Plotkin" <erkyr...@eblong.com> wrote in message
>
> news:f0d752$6pv$1...@reader2.panix.com...
>
> > Here, Richard Bos <ralt...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
> >> Or the ones who went over to Inform 7 are the "official"
> >> target audience for Inform 7: people who want to author IF, but don't
> >> want to be programmers
>
> > I'm pretty sure the stats don't support that theory.
>
> Are there stats?
Nope. There's some anecdotal evidence to support zarf's remark, I'd
say, but there is no data source from which information could be
systematically compiled.
> My impression, FWIW, is that the IF community as a whole is a tiny fraction
> of the size of the community enjoyed by freeware apps in some other fields.
> But maybe that's just my cynicism creeping in (yet again).
That sounds like realism to me, but I'm also not sure what bearing it
has on anything.
Poster
I'm not an old pro, but I'm programming in I6. I probably will continue
to do so until my trusty iBook G3 dies, or someone ports I7 to OS 9.
-- Poster
www.intaligo.com Building, INFORM, Seasons (upcoming!)
Andreas Davour
> In article <cs98xcm...@Psilocybe.Update.UU.SE>,
> Andreas Davour <an...@update.uu.se> wrote:
>>Not that I'm very representative of anything, but I still plan on using
>>Inform 6, since I hate IDE's and work much better in a command line
>>based environment.
>
> Me too...and yet, I really like the I7 IDE. One thing that I've been
> wondering--but I don't know elisp well enough to attempt--is how hard an
> I7 mode for Emacs would be.
It would be useful, anyway. I'm about to restart my elisp skills, but
don't hold your breath... :)
>>I also happen to use a myrad of platforms and Inform
>>7 being a Mac/Windows thingie doesn't help.
>
> I've done a Linux (x86, ppc, s390, armv5tel) and Solaris (x86)
> command-line port. There's a rough-around-the-edges but
> pretty-darn-good GTK+ port.
Impressive work, but really not my cuppa.
Adam Thornton
Charles N Cosper <cap...@capn-ed.net> wrote:
>If you want CLI, look no further than the Linux interface written by Adam
>Thornton. No windows here; it doesn't even have the editor built in!
>
>Actually, Adam's interface is perfectly functional, (Thanks, Adam!) in
>that you can create a working game, try it out, release it. It's only
>missing the "advanced" bells and whistles (the skein, the fancy
>transcript, integrated documentation, etc.) that you get from the IDEs. I
>must say, though, that it seems to compile the game much faster than the
>Windows IDE (can't speak about the Mac port) running on comparable
>hardware.
You can actually get the docs if you set the BROWSER environment
variable (or set it within the shell). No transcript or skein, though,
and the docs are just basic HTML (that is, no support for pasting in
examples or anything like that). They work fine in lynx, w3m, and
nautilus, at least.
Adam
aaroni...@gmail.com
> It's much more *fun* to program in, somehow, than I6 was
This is it for me in a nutshell. I think I7 has great appeal for
people who love wordplay, or find perverse joy in twisting the dry
logic and punctuation-riddled syntax of standard computer code into
valid English sentences.
I mean, the other day I wrote "The concept of love is an abstraction
in the bedroom." And that was *programming*.
Dave Griffith
Gee, thanks. You've brought back bad memories of Perl poetry.
--
David Griffith
dgr...@cs.csbuak.edu <-- Switch the 'b' and 'u'
madd...@gmail.com
> please write me and say so. If you can provide me with access to that
> platform, I will cheerily attempt the port[0], and if you have a
> modernish Perl (5 certainly, 5.6+ probably best), a POSIX shell, GCC[1],
> and the GNU coreutils (GNU tar in particular), then I'm happy to do the
> attempt, if we can work out an access plan that satsifies Graham that
> the confidentiality of his source will be respected. The only reason
> I've only done the four Linux platforms and Sol10 on x86 is that that's
> all that I currently have access to.
>
So... who would one talk to if they desperately want a ppc port of the
IDE?
My love of and luck with precompiled binaries in linux is flimsy...
mostly I guess I should shell out the money for a new x86 computer to
run linux on.
Adam Thornton
Well, the gnome7-inform stuff is GPL.
So the answer is "you." The underlying tools run on PPC, and being
statically linked and all, you should have no problem using them, as
long as you tell gnome-inform where to find them.
Adam
madd...@gmail.com
> Well, the gnome7-inform stuff is GPL.
>
> So the answer is "you." The underlying tools run on PPC, and being
> statically linked and all, you should have no problem using them, as
> long as you tell gnome-inform where to find them.
>
> Adam
Adam,
Thank you very much -- I had wrongly assumed when I looked at inform-
fiction.org and saw the links for i386 and Solaris that only
architecture specific versions were available, for some reason I
thought the "general" version was also x86 specific. Bull-headed, I
know. It's nice to realize that the only thing holding me back was my
own failure to read. I hope I didn't seem to snide in my previous
posting.
Gratefully,
Aric
Adam Thornton
madd...@gmail.com <madd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> So the answer is "you." The underlying tools run on PPC, and being
>> statically linked and all, you should have no problem using them, as
>> long as you tell gnome-inform where to find them.
>fiction.org and saw the links for i386 and Solaris that only
>architecture specific versions were available, for some reason I
>thought the "general" version was also x86 specific. Bull-headed, I
>know. It's nice to realize that the only thing holding me back was my
>own failure to read. I hope I didn't seem to snide in my previous
>posting.
No, not at all.
It's just that my ppc system, being Debian Woody (yes, Woody) on a Bondi
Blue iMac, is not going to compile gnome-inform without way, way more
work than seems reasonable.
Adam
David Anderson
> Possibly. Or the ones who went over to Inform 7 are the "official"
> target audience for Inform 7: people who want to author IF, but don't
> want to be programmers (and who, since Inform 7 is still very much a
> programming language, are running into the same kind of programming
> problems they would've run into, and had problems solving, in Inform 6).
I'd just like to step in here and disagree. I am a student finishing
my degree in software engineering, have touched many programming
languages and dare fancy myself a geek that enjoys programming for the
heck of it.
When a friend (hi Ben!) pulled me back into the IF world, I looked at
both Inform 6 and Inform 7, at the time I7 had just come out. Adter
playing a little with both, I went with I7.
A couple of reasons for that. First of all, as a programmer and geek,
I find I7 fascinating as a programming toy; a new hammer if you will.
It reminds me of the Myst universe, where the D'ni create entire
worlds through the art of describing them in a specific way. It is a
break from how I normally program in "proper languages", and is a very
refreshing break. I find that its structure fits the objective, to
describe the mechanics of a world and the progression of a story,
rather well (despite still being a little lost due to dropping IF for
several months and only recently getting back to it).
I am now writing my first story, and may never finish it; to my great
frustration, having as neat a hammer as I7 does not make me any better
at nailing words into a story. But even if my attempts lead nowhere, I
will be having fun taking a stab at it, largely thanks to the I7
language and user interface.
I just wanted to dispell the notion that I7 is only attracting people
who do not want to program. We programmers also here, using I7,
programming worlds with it, and having tremendous fun. Or at least I
am :-).
- Dave
Josh Westbury
it in I7. The WIP currently uses some jiggery pokery to create a
randomly-generated 16x16x16 map (may later be expanded to several
maps) & makes extensive use of switching to generate descriptions. I'm
aware that this could be done in I7 (thanks to some code AP kindly
posted) & considered changing over when I have time to complete the
WIP but am too far in; might have a go in a future project. My main
difficulty so far in using I7 is that it often feels like guess-the-
verb; the cookbook helps a little with this.
Josh