[ANN] New HTML TADS interpreter for Mac OS X (pre-beta)
CS
Hello all. This is to announce a new work-in-progress interpreter for
HTML TADS for Mac OS X. Well, the "in progress" part might be a bit of a
stretch - the reason I am posting this here is because I haven't had time
to work on this for a few months due to Real Life™-related issues. I
hope to find some time to polish this a little more in the summer, but
in the meantime I thought the community might enjoy what's currently here
since it's going to be a while for it to be truly finished. Right now,
it is able to play games, so it might be better than the current limited
set of options for HTML TADS at the moment, even in its unfinished
state. However, at this point it has received next to no testing and is
probably quite buggy, so please be aware that if you download this, *you*
are the beta tester.
System Requirements:
Systems I know this will run on:
My personal MacBook Pro
Mac OS X 10.5.6 (Intel)
Systems I hope this should run on (but haven't tested):
Macintosh computer with a G4, G5, or Intel processor
Mac OS X 10.4 or higher
Systems I know this won't, and never will, run on:
Any Mac with a G3 or earlier processor
Mac OS X 10.3.9 or earlier
If the app fails to run on a computer in the second group, please let me
know. If you are using a machine in the third group, time to upgrade.
;-)
Feature list:
- Lets you play HTML TADS games on Mac OS X without having to use VMWare
/ Parallels
- Attempts to support the standard Mac OS X Input Manager mechanism, so
all the standard Cocoa text shortcuts, including the emacs shortcuts,
should work
- Preliminary support for the Mac OS X Dictionary service (⌘-Ctrl-D
while hovering over a word), for those games written by authors who like
their thesaurus a little too much
Known Issues that you should not e-mail me about:
- The source code is not yet available - I will decide if and when it is
time to do so. Please do not e-mail me about this.
- There is currently no support for MNG graphics (does anyone actually
use these? I haven’t been able to find a game that uses MNG, which
I’d need if I were ever to implement this).
- There is currently no support for moving back and forth between pages.
The menu items are there, but they don’t do anything yet (this should
actually be pretty easy to implement - the problem is I won’t have
any free time for it for a little while).
- I currently haven't worked out the support for non-Western text
encodings yet. If you try to load a game that uses one of those, I'm not sure
what will happen.
- There are a lot of improvements that need to be made to the save file
mechanism. One of these is that there should be a way to double-click a
.sav file, have it open with CocoaTads, and then ask you what game file
it goes with. This is not yet implemented. You have to open the .gam,
then type “restore”, and then open the .sav.
- Eventually I want to make this a 64-bit app, assuming Mike Roberts’
back-end will handle it, to avoid the app getting Hypertads'ed if Apple
at some point in the future decides to make the OS 64-bit only. I
haven’t gotten around to doing this yet. Also, CocoaTads is not yet code-signed.
- Eventually, I want to get this so that multiple games can be running
at the same time. Unfortunately, due to the way the TADS engine is
designed, it looks like some complicated stuff with threading will be required
to make this work, so it’ll probably be a while before I get to this.
As it stands, there’s a rather awkward error message that you’ll
see if you try opening a game when another game is already open - sorry
about that.
- There are sometimes some weird bugs in the placement of the definition
box when you use the built-in spell-check service (⌘-Ctrl-D). But I
did implement the spell checker at least, and it’s partially working.
Isn’t that nifty?
- CocoaTads lacks any icons whatsoever. Ideally, there would be icons
for the application, game files, and save files. Unfortunately, I’m not
a graphic designer (if anyone would like to help out with this, it would
be welcome).
- There is currently no documentation at all other than a short Read Me
file.
- There are probably a lot more options I could implement in the
preferences.
- I'm sure there are a lot of rendering bugs still in there that will
come out in beta testing.
- There are some more things, but I’m not remembering them at the
moment. I’m sure I’ll get some e-mails reminding me.
Okay, without any further ado, here's the download link. I hope you
derive some enjoyment from it despite its unfinished nature.
http://www.charlessoft.com/CocoaTads.zip
CS
--
NOTE: The e-mail address in the "From:" header is a fake, and e-mails
directed there will not get to me. This is because I don't like spam. If
you'd like to send me e-mail, my real address begins with "support",
followed by the symbol that looks like an "a" with a circle around it, then
"charlessoft", then a period, and finally "moc" spelled backwards. Sorry
for the inconvenience.
kw_...@hotmail.com
wrote:
> Hello all. This is to announce a new work-in-progress interpreter for
> HTML TADS for Mac OS X. Well, the "in progress" part might be a bit of a
> stretch - the reason I am posting this here is because I haven't had time
> to work on this for a few months due to Real Life™-related issues. I
> hope to find some time to polish this a little more in the summer, but
> in the meantime I thought the community might enjoy what's currently here
> since it's going to be a while for it to be truly finished. Right now,
> it is able to play games, so it might be better than the current limited
> set of options for HTML TADS at the moment, even in its unfinished
> state. However, at this point it has received next to no testing and is
> probably quite buggy, so please be aware that if you download this, *you*
> are the beta tester.
Marvellous. I'm using 10.4 and it's working fine so far. Pictures and
everything.
Thanks very much.
James Jolley
CS<fake.a...@dont.send.mail.here.its.a.fake.com> said:
I am certainly interested in seeing it improve. At the present time,
accessibility with voiceOver is impossible as it crashes it whenever
the scroll area with the text is interacted with. Also, status line not
being shown either to VO but anyways a good effort for those who can
work with it.
Best
-James-
Charles S.
James Jolley <james....@homecall.co.uk> wrote:
>I am certainly interested in seeing it improve. At the present time,
>accessibility with voiceOver is impossible as it crashes it whenever
>the scroll area with the text is interacted with. Also, status line not
>being shown either to VO but anyways a good effort for those who can
>work with it.
>
>Best
>
>-James-
>
I wouldn't be surprised at this, because the Accessibility support is
currently fairly half-assed - I got it working well enough for the
dictionary widget to do its thing, and didn't go much further than that. I
can't promise that I will get to it anytime soon, but if you could tell me
the exact step-by-step instructions to reproduce the crash, it would help
me a lot in trying to fix this the next time I have some time to look
at it. It would be nice to know exactly what .gam or .t3 file you're
using, as well as exactly what sequence of keys and/or mouse clicks you use
to make the crash occur - I don't use VoiceOver, so I'm not too familiar
with what it can do.
Thanks,
Charles
James Jolley
S.<fake.a...@dont.send.mail.here.its.a.fake.com> said:
>
> James Jolley <james....@homecall.co.uk> wrote:
>> I am certainly interested in seeing it improve. At the present time,
>> accessibility with voiceOver is impossible as it crashes it whenever
>> the scroll area with the text is interacted with. Also, status line not
>> being shown either to VO but anyways a good effort for those who can
>> work with it.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> -James-
>>
>
> I wouldn't be surprised at this, because the Accessibility support is
> currently fairly half-assed - I got it working well enough for the
> dictionary widget to do its thing, and didn't go much further than that. I
> can't promise that I will get to it anytime soon, but if you could tell me
> the exact step-by-step instructions to reproduce the crash, it would help
> me a lot in trying to fix this the next time I have some time to look
> at it. It would be nice to know exactly what .gam or .t3 file you're
> using, as well as exactly what sequence of keys and/or mouse clicks you use
> to make the crash occur - I don't use VoiceOver, so I'm not too familiar
> with what it can do.
> Thanks,
> Charles
Okay. I'm guessing the best thing for you to do first is work on the
main terp for sighted users. We can deal with the access when you're up
and running. I don't want to add extra difficulties at this early stage
for you as this is awaited by many users.
Best
-James-
Aaron A. Reed
>
> CS
>
> --
> NOTE: The e-mail address in the "From:" header is a fake, and e-mails
> directed there will not get to me. This is because I don't like spam. If
> you'd like to send me e-mail, my real address begins with "support",
> followed by the symbol that looks like an "a" with a circle around it, then
> "charlessoft", then a period, and finally "moc" spelled backwards. Sorry
> for the inconvenience.
Sweet. Thanks very much for this!
--Aaron