Inform for the Apple II

[nootrac90]

Hello,
I was wondering if there was a version of Inform for the Apple II?
Thanks

[John W Kennedy]

On 2013-08-02 20:36:36 +0000, nootrac90 said:

> Hello,
> I was wondering if there was a version of Inform for the Apple II?

If you mean the Inform compiler, no. Back when Apple IIs were
state-of-the-art, Infocom's proprietary ZILCH compiler, the nearest
thing to Inform at the time, ran on a mainframe, not a personal
computer, and Inform is much more complex than ZILCH.

If you mean, "Can an Apple II run games created by Inform?", I expect
that games created by older versions of Inform using Version 3 of the Z
machine can be run by interpreters available on the Apple II, but way
back then, Infocom games in Version 4, 5, or 6 did not run on the Apple
II, and modern versions of Inform, on the other hand, cannot create
games in Version 3.

Of course, on the general principle that all Turing machines are
equivalent, I suppose it could be done in theory, but it would take
/lots/ of work, and would be painfully slow. Remember, even an iPhone
is many thousand times the computer an Apple II was.

--
John W Kennedy
Read the remains of Shakespeare's lost play, now annotated!
http://www.SKenSoftware.com/Double%20Falshood

[rpresser]

On Friday, August 2, 2013 5:28:54 PM UTC-4, John W Kennedy wrote:
> On 2013-08-02 20:36:36 +0000, nootrac90 said:
> > Hello,
> > I was wondering if there was a version of Inform for the Apple II?
>
> If you mean the Inform compiler, no. Back when Apple IIs were

Well, apparently that's not entirely true. The *current* version of
Inform (Inform 7), as well as the previous one (Inform 6), do not
exist in ports for the Apple II. But the one before that, Inform 5,
does exist for the Apple IIgs:
http://ifarchive.flavorplex.com/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXcompilersXinform5Xexecutables.html

[John W Kennedy]

Yeah, well, the IIgs is a II like a Chevilac is a Chevy.

--
John W Kennedy
If Bill Gates believes in "intelligent design", why can't he apply it
to Windows?

[Doug McIntyre]

<ade...@inbox.com> writes:
>Infocom had a mainframe? Wow. I don't think that DVD documentary covered
>that. I would have loved to see how it was done. Developing on a mainframe,
>that is.

There's some info here..

http://www.filfre.net/2012/01/selling-zork/

There's a classic pic of somebody programming on a PDP-10 here..

http://nushackers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/nerdpol-ken-den.jpg

(Ken Thompson + Dennis Ritchie).

I choose that one because it pretty clearly shows one setup, as
opposed to a marketing photo of tons of cabinets.

I can't remember if they had a PDP-10 or PDP-11 in their office,
probably the later as it was more affordable, even if twas a smaller
system.

You'll have to remember that when personal computers were really first
taking off, they came with 16k of RAM and floppy disks to boot, load
programs and store data. OOTH, a PDP-10 maybe came with 512 kiloword
to 4 megaword of memory, and had disk packs (ie. removable hard
drives) to store data onto.

Development on a personal computer then would be painful. It wasn't
uncommon to program for them on a larger computer to produce output
for the personal computer since they had so little RAM and only worked
with floppies.

[John W Kennedy]

On 2013-08-03 13:52:44 +0000, Doug McIntyre said:

> <ade...@inbox.com> writes:
>> Infocom had a mainframe? Wow. I don't think that DVD documentary covered
>> that. I would have loved to see how it was done. Developing on a mainframe,
>> that is.
>
> There's some info here..
>
> http://www.filfre.net/2012/01/selling-zork/
>
> There's a classic pic of somebody programming on a PDP-10 here..
>
> http://nushackers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/nerdpol-ken-den.jpg
>
> (Ken Thompson + Dennis Ritchie).
>
> I choose that one because it pretty clearly shows one setup, as
> opposed to a marketing photo of tons of cabinets.
>
> I can't remember if they had a PDP-10 or PDP-11 in their office,
> probably the later as it was more affordable, even if twas a smaller
> system.

A DECSYSTEM-20 (i.e., a PDP-10 equipped with the TOPS-20 operating system).

> You'll have to remember that when personal computers were really first
> taking off, they came with 16k of RAM and floppy disks to boot, load
> programs and store data. OOTH, a PDP-10 maybe came with 512 kiloword
> to 4 megaword of memory, and had disk packs (ie. removable hard
> drives) to store data onto.
>
> Development on a personal computer then would be painful. It wasn't
> uncommon to program for them on a larger computer to produce output
> for the personal computer since they had so little RAM and only worked
> with floppies.

Infocom's early interpreters had to be individually written in the
various systems' respective assembly languages.

--
John W Kennedy
"The pathetic hope that the White House will turn a Caligula into a
Marcus Aurelius is as na�ve as the fear that ultimate power inevitably
corrupts."
-- James D. Barber (1930-2004)

[Adam Thornton]

In article <1601650900397217731.7...@news.aioe.org>,
<ade...@inbox.com> wrote:

>John W Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>Infocom had a mainframe? Wow. I don't think that DVD documentary covered
>that. I would have loved to see how it was done. Developing on a mainframe,
>that is.

Some of us would dispute the characterization of a PDP-10 as a
mainframe.

Adam

[Andy Leighton]

On what grounds? It was quite clearly a mainframe.

Also I'm not entirely sure that Infocom actually owned a PDP-10 but
they certainly were pretty much focused on writing code for the PDP-10
in the beginning using time on machines owned by MIT and DEC.

--
Andy Leighton => an...@azaal.plus.com
"The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials"
- Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_

[John W Kennedy]

I have no DEC experience apart from using some non-DEC terminals in
VT-100 emulation, so I can't judge on engineering grounds, but the
thing was big, and Infocom's particular machine is and was called a
"mainframe" in almost every source. It is interesting to note that the
designer of the PDP-10 console seems to have worked on an IBM 7090 or
7094 at some point.

--
John W Kennedy
A proud member of the reality-based community.

[Adam Thornton]

In article <2013080511130610918-jwkenne@attglobalnet>,

John W Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>On 2013-08-05 13:09:52 +0000, Adam Thornton said:
>
>> In article <1601650900397217731.7...@news.aioe.org>,
>> <ade...@inbox.com> wrote:
>>> John W Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>>> Infocom had a mainframe? Wow. I don't think that DVD documentary covered
>>> that. I would have loved to see how it was done. Developing on a mainframe,
>>> that is.
>>
>> Some of us would dispute the characterization of a PDP-10 as a
>> mainframe.
>
>I have no DEC experience apart from using some non-DEC terminals in
>VT-100 emulation, so I can't judge on engineering grounds, but the
>thing was big, and Infocom's particular machine is and was called a
>"mainframe" in almost every source. It is interesting to note that the
>designer of the PDP-10 console seems to have worked on an IBM 7090 or
>7094 at some point.

Grumble grumble overgrown minicomputer, but, yeah, fine, I concede the
point.

Adam

[John W Kennedy]

On 2013-08-05 15:11:42 +0000, Andy Leighton said:

> On Mon, 5 Aug 2013 13:09:52 +0000 (UTC), Adam Thornton <ad...@fsf.net> wrote:
>> In article <1601650900397217731.7...@news.aioe.org>,
>> <ade...@inbox.com> wrote:
>>> John W Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>>> Infocom had a mainframe? Wow. I don't think that DVD documentary covered
>>> that. I would have loved to see how it was done. Developing on a mainframe,
>>> that is.
>>
>> Some of us would dispute the characterization of a PDP-10 as a
>> mainframe.
>
> On what grounds? It was quite clearly a mainframe.
>
> Also I'm not entirely sure that Infocom actually owned a PDP-10 but
> they certainly were pretty much focused on writing code for the PDP-10
> in the beginning using time on machines owned by MIT and DEC.

They ultimately owned at least two DECSYSTEM-20 systems, one reserved
for Cornerstone. One source says that the first one was originally
owned by Joel Berez, and only purchased by Infocom itself in late 1982.

[rpresser]

On Friday, August 2, 2013 8:17:43 PM UTC-4, John W Kennedy wrote:
> On 2013-08-02 23:02:27 +0000, rpresser said:
> > does exist for the Apple IIgs:
> > http://ifarchive.flavorplex.com/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXcompilersXinform5Xexecutables.html

> Yeah, well, the IIgs is a II like a Chevilac is a Chevy.

Not surprising; I have about as much experience with Apple of all
varieties as I do with Chevys. And I never heard the word Chevilac
until today. :)

[x3v10...@gmail.com]

Related question: is there a compiler for MacPlus? Playability of inform games on a MacPlus?

Thank you.
R

[John W Kennedy]

I don't know offhand whether there is any sort of modern MacPlus
interpreter today, but the Infocom series as of 1984 had first-day
availablity on the original Mac.

--
John W Kennedy
"The grand art mastered the thudding hammer of Thor
And the heart of our lord Taliessin determined the war."
-- Charles Williams. "Mount Badon"

[Frank Furhter]

The PDP-11 or the 10 as I recall (programmed on the former) was by no
means called a mainframe. It was a high end mini, and that is the way
the cookie crumbled back then. Main frames were more like the CDC 6K or
above, and they required actual administrators.

[John W Kennedy]

The fact remains that, then and now, "mainframe" is the word used by
the folks at Infocom for their DECSystem-20s.

And, frankly, I've known undoubted mainframes of the era that were smaller.

--
John W Kennedy
"The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything...."
-- Emile Cammaerts, "The Laughing Prophet"

[Ander GM]

nootrac90 escribió:

> Hello,
> I was wondering if there was a version of Inform for the Apple II?
> Thanks
>

No, but with Puny Inform you can code Z-Machine games targeting the V3
version of the virtual machine, making your games playable on the Apple II.

[Ander GM]

nootrac90 escribió:

> Hello,
> I was wondering if there was a version of Inform for the Apple II?
> Thanks
>

Also, I forgot, sorry:

https://github.com/johanberntsson/PunyInform

[John W Kennedy]

In any case, PunyInform is based on Inform 6, which is roughly as
different from Inform 7 as K&R C is from Swift with SwiftUI.

--
John W. Kennedy
Algernon Burbage, Lord Roderick, Father Martin, Bishop Baldwin,
King Pellinore, Captain Bailey, Merlin -- A Kingdom for a Stage!