Patted On the Head Again (Inform 7 Docs)
While working on New Cat, I was curious how to do a one-time room description; in Inform 6, I used the visited attribute. How could I do it in Inform 7?
As it turns out, I’m still not sure. I searched through the documentation provided by the IDE, and the results returned by the search were completely unhelpful. The closest thing I got was a page that talked about how to set the initial descriptions of items, but which (horribly unhelpfully) noted that you can’t do that with a room because a room doesn’t have an initial attribute. And how was this noted? You guessed it — with the usual pat on the head, the “good dog” kind of insulting, demeaning language. Yes, the personality of the writer (whom we all know) is shining though. Freaking thanks. So what are the properties of a room? Are they the same as in I6? If so, how do I manipulate them in I7?
Fifteen minutes of looking didn’t turn up an answer to any of these questions. Ok, fine, whatever. I went out there to find other manuals and apparently no-one else has addressed this issue either, which I find nothing short of amazing.
I guess it’s up to me to write an Inform 6 -> Inform 7 technical guide which explains how to do the things in I7 that you used to do in I6.
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BBEdit INFORM Tools 1.1
One of the things lost with my laptop was my Inform BBEdit tools build process. Well, after a lot of thrashing around with MPW, I finally rediscovered how to create these tools. And in the process of so doing, I updated them. They are, as Mac people are known to say, snappier. Ok, not really. They do have more functionality, though. In short:
- Single-quoted strings are now colored
- Preprocessor commands are now colored
For those of you using BBEdit 6-8 on OS 8-9, check ‘em out. Now don’t say I never gave you anything. 
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Inform 6 Library Archive Online
If you need the latest in Inform 6 libraries and don’t mind the sting of using an unofficial archive, I’ve got the goods. Head on over to ftp.intaligo.com and use following login/password: anonymous@intaligo.com/whatever you like.
As far as its unofficial status, well, I got tired of waiting for others to fix their stuff. I’ve also added stuff to this archive that isn’t in the official archive — other I6 files that live on the web in various places that I’ve found useful. I’ll also be updating it on a regular basis, so enjoy!
