This file is a placeholder for the real notes that seem have gone missing! - CK



Generic Installation Notes for Inform



Installation of the relevant files is not difficult. Bear in mind the

following:



a) You should have downloaded two components - the Compiler and the

Library. These may be compressed into archives and you will need to

extract the contents. If opening the files you have downloaded does not

automatically start the extraction, you may not have the correct

program. For example, the .zip version needs WinZip (from winzip.com),

while the .tar.gz needs the tar utility to extract.



On platforms (Windows, Linux) with file extensions, you should leave the

.h endings on the library files. On some platforms (Archimedes) there

should be no file extensions.



b) It makes sense to keep all the library files together in a single

directory (folder). It may or may not be convenient to have the compiler

program in the same directory; if you choose to use a different

directory, you will need to specify the location of the library when

running the compiler. The command line might look like:



c:\progra~1\inform\inform +,c:\progra~1\inform\lib



where "c:\progra~1\inform\lib" represents an example path of the

library.



(You can also have multiple include paths, e.g. an additional to

downloaded library contributions, by separating the paths with a comma).



c) It will probably be handy to set up your text editor to run the

compiler on the current file. Most editors let you assign such tasks to

run when a particular 'hotkey' combination is pressed.



d) you will also of course need an interpreter to run the compiled file.

See the Z-machine/interpreters section of this site if you do not

already have the ability to run z-code or Infocom files.



e) If in doubt, run the compiler from the command line with the -h1 and

-h2 switches to get help for your system.



So the installation consists of:

1) create a folder to unpack the files to

2) unpack the files

3) enter the command line to run Inform

4) run Inform on a test file, such as magic-toyshop.inf, available from

http://ifarchive.biff.org.uk/if-archive/games/source/inform/magic-toyshop.inf





Hope this helps!