Updates

[Thomas]

Hi everyone!

Like most of you, my Alan work has dwindled during the last years. I'm still committed to supporting any users and it is a fun project. But there are many other fun projects out there, and also a bit of work, although I'm nearing, some would say past, the point of retirement ;-)

About a week ago I was approached by a guy from Chalmers, the Gothenburg University and Institute of Technology. He was working IT forensics research and had found that https://alanif.se was randomly redirecting visitors to other, not so benevolent, sites. It collected whatever information it could about the visitor, but was probably not malicious in the more serious manner.

That made me visit the site again, probably the first time in 4-5 years, actually. It hadn't been updated to newer platforms because some of the things on alanif.se was not forward compatible, so I kinda just let it slide.

It turned out that the injection was serious, a dormant re-write script, about 4000 .htaccess files (if that means anything to any of you), and around 100 random injected PHP files. So saving it seemed impossible.

With a little help from my friend Claude, I rebuilt the whole site in the old ones likeness. It also meant I could clean up the navigation and add some missing articles about IFcomp entries during the last decade ;-( that I had not mentioned. I also added some images to those and other articles. I actually think it was for the better. There's nothing bad that doesn't also bring some good.

I also seemed to have lost the ability to manage this list. Hence the initial account check. But that has been resolved, so if any new members should request membership I can handle that.

And I'm very happy to see that there is actually some Alan activity out there still! And good hear from you guys again!

/Thomas

[Mike Arnaud]

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[Ben Martin]

Hi Mike,

It's been many years -- eons -- since I've last tackled anything with Alan-if. In fact, it was back when, thanks to your "TV Time" tutorial, I was able to learn the basics. And, as the various new versions of Alan-if came along, I often wished to you had created a follow-uip tutorial as clear and precise as that one. The "cookbook" isn't (wasn't nearly) as helpful to me.

But I've always had the urge to get back to it.

So now I'm wondering:

1.    How would I go about downloading all of the material I'd need to start again learning the language and programming in it?

2.    Is there a good tutorial available.

3.    Where (how) could I get step-by-step instructions regarding downloading, installing, etc. I was in fairly constant communication with Steve Griffiths for a while and I think I saw his name come up on this string.

Many thanks for whatever you can do to get me started again. It will be learning from the beginning, I'm afraid.

--- Ben Martin

On Wednesday, July 15, 2026 at 06:39:28 AM PDT, Mike Arnaud <ma...@juno.com> wrote:

Thanks, Thomas! That made me smile.

I hope you were able to correct that terrible oversight that placed "~~Waldo's Pie~~" in 13th place those twenty-something years ago.

Mike Arnaud

Please note: message attached

From: Thomas <tho...@alanif.se>
To: "ala...@googlegroups.com" <ala...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [alan-if] Updates
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2026 11:58:51 +0000


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[Anssi Räisänen]

Hi! For getting started, there is this excellent introduction by Robert DeFord:

https://alan-if.github.io/alan-docs/

Best,

Anssi

---

From: 'Ben Martin' via Alan IF discussions <ala...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2026 9:26 PM
To: ala...@googlegroups.com <ala...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [alan-if] Updates

 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/alan-if/1221984053.1705046.1784139993230%40mail.yahoo.com.

[stephen....@xtra.co.nz]

Anssi is referring to a doc well down on that 'github' page under the heading "Alan IDE Reference Guide" (direct link https://alan-if.github.io/alan-docs/ideguide/ideguide.pdf). I think this guide should be given higher prominence on that page to ensure beginners start with it rather than the more indepth documentation which may not be immediately comprehensible to a novice.

 

This Guide document should also be easily found by beginners who start at the homepage of the Alan system at the alanif.se website.

 

On the home page for AlanIF.se there's two 'download' links. The one of the top banner leads to pages which aren't beginner friendly. The 'download' link in the right hand column part way down the front page leads to a more focused list of possible downloads, explaining what to download to either develop games or just play them. It's still not as beginner-friendly as the Guide at the github site. So I think adding references to the Guide onto several of the pages at alanif.se would improve the experience for people who are first exploring the Alan development system

 

I had a quick look at the guide. I think that following the guide at the github site will work for a newbie - I checked links in it that point to alanif.se and confirmed they are currently alive and seem to be the correct ones.

 

However I can't see any link on the alanif.se site to the 'Guide' on Github site. This could be tidied up to improve the initial experience for beginning developers. In the 'Documentation' link in the alanif.se banner, there's a "Getting Setup" link to a page which does not mention the 'Guide', it would make it a lot easier for absolute beginners if there was such a link.

 

Let me know if I could be of assistance to tidy up these features of the websites, either as a beta-tester or editor.

 

 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/alan-if/AS8P190MB1575F74113FF799C68235F15DBF82%40AS8P190MB1575.EURP190.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.

[stephen....@xtra.co.nz]

hmmm, i sent a reply to this conversation (with a new heading 'Getting Started') which went to my spam folder when it was emailed back to me by Google Groups, I'm guessing too many weblinks in i and it triggered the spam-filter.

 

Hopefully that won't happen for too many people in the Group

 

 

On 16/07/2026 09:17 NZST Anssi Räisänen <anss...@hotmail.com> wrote:

 

 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/alan-if/AS8P190MB1575F74113FF799C68235F15DBF82%40AS8P190MB1575.EURP190.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.

[Ben Martin]

Thank you to Stephen, Michael and Anassi. I'll check out these sources when I get back from my trip.

Best to all,

Ben Martin

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/alan-if/AS8P190MB1575F74113FF799C68235F15DBF82%40AS8P190MB1575.EURP190.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.

[Mike Arnaud]

hmmm, i sent a reply to this conversation (with a new heading 'Getting Started') which went to my spam folder when it was emailed back to me by Google Groups, I'm guessing too many weblinks in i and it triggered the spam-filter.

 

Hopefully that won't happen for too many people in the Group

 

 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/alan-if/504955531.890742.1784156912626%40webmail1.xtra.co.nz.

[Ben Martin]

Thanks, Mike.

--- Ben

On Friday, July 17, 2026 at 11:17:18 AM PDT, Mike Arnaud <ma...@juno.com> wrote:

Hi Ben,

I'm afraid I'm no longer the one to help with your re-start. I'm in my 70s now and writing a theology book, which takes most of my free time. Besides I use Linux not Mint. I might dabble again some day but probably not.

I remember Stephen Griffith was a great help to me back in the day. He seems to still have the heart for it. :)   

Mike Arnaud

Please note: message attached

From: stephen....@xtra.co.nz
To: ala...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [alan-if] Updates
Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2026 11:08:32 +1200 (NZST)


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[Thomas]

Those are good comments, Stephen!

I just cleaned up the menu design a bit to make that clearer. I can see that the top subentry in Documentation is "Getting Setup" which was an early, quick and dirty, but quite involved article about how to choose your programming environment. I think two better articles at the top of the "Documentation" menu would be "Getting started playing" and "Getting started writing". Those two articles does not exist. Yet. Happy to take any suggestions for their content, or even offering an editor position on the site to actually write them ;-)

Generally there is very good documentation out there, some are a bit dated (should be noted and/or refreshed) but primarily they need to be sorted/listed in a way that they are easily accessible to newcomers. Happy to take any suggestions here to. I think the website can be viewed as the structured presentation of all the documentation available.

I would be very happy if someone could run through, not just reading it, but doing the motions, the AlanIDE guide from scratch to see if it *is* work, then that could possibly be canon starting point for beginners.

/Thomas

------ Originalmeddelande ------

Från stephen....@xtra.co.nz

Till ala...@googlegroups.com; "Anssi Räisänen" <anss...@hotmail.com>

Datum 2026-07-16 01:02:55

Ämne [alan-if] getting started

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