[ANNOUNCE] New interpreter available: QTads 1.0 beta
Nikos Chantziaras
After some private beta-testing releases (mostly per email and hidden
URLs, in order to protect the guilty ;), it has reached a point of
stability that makes it suitable for public release. So, here it is.
QTads is a GUI interpreter for Tads games. Both Tads 2 and Tads 3
games are supported. It doesn't support the HTML-extensions, but
there's a reason for it (other than my laziness); unlike
HTML-interpreters, it can block-justify the game's text, which is a
feature I consider very important (yeah, so are sounds and graphics,
but that's a different project of mine). If you ever used Stephen
Granade's WinTADS interpreter for Windows, you know what to expect.
But unlike WinTADS, it includes the newest Tads VM (and WinTADS doesn't
support Tads 3 at all) and has more features (but lacks others, ah
well; TODO, TODO, TODO...).
It runs on every i386 Unix/X11 system that has a Qt library available.
It doesn't need KDE, but if you happen to use KDE 3, QTads will behave
like a native KDE application. On other environments it will look like
a Win9x app. Oh, and by the way: QTads is the first X11 interpreter
that can run Tads 3 games.
Guess what? It is licensed under the GPL, which means it's Free
Software. Not like this other, imprisoned one. Really Free, True,
Honest, Democratic Software. (Who cares.)
Okay, seriously now, I would like to thank Mike Roberts for allowing me
to use his code in a GPL program. Thanks, Mike!
Features:
* User configurable themes (like in HTML TADS for Windows).
* Configurable text-justification.
* Font anti-aliasing (if enabled in the Qt library).
* Fullscreen-mode without switching resolution.
* Margins.
* Menubar, toolbar and scrollbar can be turned on and off.
* Nice GUI (just my opinion, but XGlk TADS has a rude GUI).
* "Slow" scrolling.
Things I'm not so proud of (I hope to fix them soon):
* Tads 3 banners.
* Configurable input-font.
* Typographical (curly) quotes.
* Slow scrolling can't be turned off.
* Timed input.
* Some minor bugs here and there you hopefully won't notice (hey,
it's still beta).
Since the Qt library has been ported to some rather strange systems
lately (PDAs, cell phones, fridges), it's possible that QTads may run
on them in the future; playing Tads games on your Nokia would be quite
nice. Unfortunately, I don't own such devices, so if there are any
volunteers that can compile QTads for these systems, please contact me!
For those who can't decide if QTads is worth trying out or not, I've
placed some screenshots on its homepage:
http://members.lycos.co.uk/realnc/qtads
This is also the location where you can download the interpreter. Both
source as well as binary packages are provided. I hope to move the
page to SourceForge.net at some point, since the Tripod servers I'm
currently using have bandwidth limits. And banners suck anyway. (As
for now, there is a http://qtads.sourceforge.net page, but it's empty
and I'm lazy.) In case you hit the download limit, I also uploaded the
interpreter to the IF Archive. As always, it's currently in the
"unprocessed" directory. The package is somewhat big (about a meg), so
it's better to get it from http://mirror.ifarchive.org (which is the
fastest updated mirror, as far as I know). The files are:
qtads-1.0_beta.tar.bz2 -- Sources.
qtads-1.0_beta-bin.tar.bz2 -- Binaries (GCC 2.95.3 and GCC 3.2.1).
The final locations should be (the second should be a link to the
first):
(Source package.)
if-archive/programming/tads2/source/qtads-1.0_beta.tar.bz2
if-archive/programming/tads3/source/qtads-1.0_beta.tar.bz2
(Binary package.)
if-archive/programming/tads2/executables/qtads-1.0_beta-bin.tar.bz2
if-archive/programming/tads3/executables/qtads-1.0_beta-bin.tar.bz2
Note that I won't upload every new version to the archive, since "new
versions" include Tads 3 VM updates, and they will be very frequent; I
would spam the archive!
All said: have fun with this new interpreter! I enjoyed writing it
and I hope you'll enjoy using it. May it find a free corner on your
hard drive.
For questions, comments, porting issues, or anything else, contact me:
realnc - at - hotmail - dot - com
(Remove the dashes and spaces and replace "at" with "@" and "dot" with
".". Don't use your newsreader's "Reply To Sender" function, since
your message would go to my spam-bucket and I would first read it in a
decade or so. May those spammers burn in hell for eternity and their
ass infested by seven trillion camel-fleas.)
(Make it eight trillion.)
-- Niko
http://members.lycos.co.uk/realnc
Nikos Chantziaras
news:b6va9n$9ei53$1...@ID-151409.news.dfncis.de...
> [...]
> I also uploaded the interpreter to the IF Archive. As always,
> it's currently in the "unprocessed" directory.
It finally made it to the final locations.
Binary:
http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/tads3/executables/qtads-1
.0_beta-bin.tar.bz2
Sources:
http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/tads3/source/qtads-1.0_be
ta.tar.bz2
One thing: I just discovered that Qt 3.0.x versions are probably not good
enough for QTads; Qt 3.1 seems to be the minimum. Sorry for the
inconvenience. I'll try to fix this, since most people out there are still
using 3.0 versions.
-- Niko
http://members.lycos.co.uk/realnc