Announce: new Glk library

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Hello all.

I just wanted to announce that I have written
a new Glk library for Windows and unix, with
the (rather surprisingly unique) focus
on achieving good typography. I call it
Gargoyle, for lack of better imagination.

Maybe someone else besides me will like it too

http://ghostscript.com/~tor/software/gargoyle/

There is a package of compiled stuff for Windows,
and a source package for unix systems. It should
compile without problems on most linuxes and bsds
with gtk+ 1.2, but I've only tested it on MacOS X
with darwinports.

Among other goodies that you can find are
new Glk ports of Frotz and TADS 3.

Enjoy,
Tor

 

[samwyse]

Archived from groups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

On or about 3/18/2005 3:47 AM, tor.andersson@gmail.com did proclaim:
> Hello all.
>
> I just wanted to announce that I have written
> a new Glk library for Windows and unix, with
> the (rather surprisingly unique) focus
> on achieving good typography. I call it
> Gargoyle, for lack of better imagination.

This looks pretty cool. I will say that there's a reason why so many
Z-machine interpreters choose white text on a blue background. IIRC,
that was the color scheme used by Infocom for many of their games. If
you play them using a different scheme, you will sometimes get an
unreadable combination of bg/fg colors. Of course, people continue to
write games assuming that as the default, which just compounds the problem.

You can try inverting all of the color specifications, but then people
don't like it when red and green text gets its colors swapped. Hmmm, I
wonder if one could convert the color cube to HSV, invert just the V
axis, and then convert back to RGB?

Have you done any work on this "problem"? Does anyone have a list of
games that don't work if the default color scheme is other than the default?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Andrew Hunter wrote:
> samwyse wrote:
> > This looks pretty cool. I will say that there's a reason why
> > so many Z-machine interpreters choose white text on a blue
> > background. IIRC, that was the color scheme used by Infocom
> > for many of their games.
>
> Correction: it was the DOS default. Infocom's own interpreters
> used different colour schemes on different systems. Their mac
> interpreters, for example, used white-on-black. The Apple ][
> intepreters may have defaulted to black-on-white.

You've got those backwards. Apple II's were white on black
text (and 40 columns, and all-caps, back when I was playing
them), and Mac displays were black on white.


--
J. Robinson Wheeler Games: http://raddial.com/if/
JRW Digital Media Movie: http://thekroneexperiment.com/

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 16:34:22 +0000, Andrew Hunter
<andrew@logicalshift.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Correction: it was the DOS default. Infocom's own interpreters used
>different colour schemes on different systems. Their mac interpreters,
>for example, used white-on-black. The Apple ][ intepreters may have
>defaulted to black-on-white. White-on-blue was quite a common colour
>scheme for DOS applications to use in the 80s, but I don't recall
>seeing it anywhere else.

It was also the default color scheme for the commodore 64 interpreter, fwiw.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

In rec.arts.int-fiction tor.andersson@gmail.com <tor.andersson@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all.

> I just wanted to announce that I have written
> a new Glk library for Windows and unix, with
> the (rather surprisingly unique) focus
> on achieving good typography. I call it
> Gargoyle, for lack of better imagination.

> Maybe someone else besides me will like it too

> http://ghostscript.com/~tor/software/gargoyle/

> There is a package of compiled stuff for Windows,
> and a source package for unix systems. It should
> compile without problems on most linuxes and bsds
> with gtk+ 1.2, but I've only tested it on MacOS X
> with darwinports.

I tried this on NetBSD and got this:

gmake -C launcher
gmake[1]: Entering directory `/usr/home/dave/src/gargoyle/launcher'
gmake[1]: *** No targets. Stop.
gmake[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/home/dave/src/gargoyle/launcher'
gmake: *** [default] Error 2

I then commented out the launcher target and got this:

gmake -C garglk
gmake[1]: Entering directory `/usr/home/dave/src/gargoyle/garglk'
cp garglk.ini ../bin/garglk.ini
cp: ../bin/garglk.ini: No such file or directory
gmake[1]: *** [../bin/garglk.ini] Error 1
gmake[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/home/dave/src/gargoyle/garglk'
gmake: *** [default] Error 2

> Among other goodies that you can find are
> new Glk ports of Frotz and TADS 3.

Nice. I was always reluctant to remove V6 support.


--
David Griffith
dgriffi@cs.csbuak.edu <-- Switch the 'b' and 'u'

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Andrew Hunter wrote:
> Not entirely unique <g>. Making the display look good was one of the
design
> goals of Zoom from the start. The Cocoa version has pretty much all
of the
> typographical features of Gargoyle

Ah, yes. I like it, that's why I didn't bother to make a native MacOSX
port

But Zoom doesnt look as good on windows or linux,
nor does it play non-z-code games... at least not last I checked.
By the way, have you considered making the amount of margins and
line spacing in Zoom configurable?

Tor

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

In article <1111247786.159403.229710@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>, tor.andersson@gmail.com wrote:
> Andrew Hunter wrote:
>> Not entirely unique <g>. Making the display look good was one of the
> design
>> goals of Zoom from the start. The Cocoa version has pretty much all
> of the
>> typographical features of Gargoyle
>
> Ah, yes. I like it, that's why I didn't bother to make a native MacOSX
> port
>
> But Zoom doesnt look as good on windows or linux,

True, I haven't done too much work on the X11 version for quite a while.
It is in need of an overhaul, but I haven't really had time for that
recently. I have some vague plans to add support for Pango or possibly
even add a proper Qt/GNOME interface.

> nor does it play non-z-code games... at least not last I checked.

Support for Glk is something that's in the works. There's a somewhat
out-of-date version of my Cocoa Glk library available from
<http://www.logicalshift.demon.co.uk/etc/CocoaGlk-dev.dmg> (substitute
Src for -dev for the source code). That actually predates the Cocoa
version of Zoom by a few months.

The current version I'm working on shares almost no code with that, though.
(Unfortunately, it's not yet in quite such a usable state).

> By the way, have you considered making the amount of margins and
> line spacing in Zoom configurable?

Improving the font/style selection system is one of the things that's been on
my todo list for a while. The current font selection window is unweildy to
say the least.

Andrew.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> But what about block-justified text? "Good typography" requires it.

Does not "require" it, necessarily. Most typography guides say this
about alignment:

"Flush left, also called 'ragged right,' is the most readable
alignment. It provides uniform or normal letter and word spacing,
minimizes awkward hyphenation of words, and provides the eye with a
common starting point for each line. Any significant amount of text set
centered or ragged left is very difficult to read because the eye must
search for the start of each new line.

Justified alignment (flush left and right) compresses or expands letter
and word spacing to fit a given line and can produce awkward
hyphenation of words. The disadvantages of justified text can be
reduced by increasing the line length or by decreasing the point size
of the type."

Also:

"Do not use justified text. Justified text was designed for print
media. It has a sort of vogue in the business world because all the
paragraphs come out in crisp, clean boxes with no jagged lines running
down either side. Aesthetically very sharp, but difficult to read. Very
pretty if you want to look at aesthetically pleasing whole paragraphs,
but comparatively useless if you want to read individual lines. The
problem is that the human eye uses those uneven endings on lines to
keep track of what line it is on."

Purely coincidentally I am taking courses in typography and design
right now, which is why these spring to mind. (I am assuming by "block
justified", you mean text that is justified both left and right, of
course.)

Soon-Min

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Stating that good typography "requires" justification
is an oversimplification of a very complex topic

Good typography is all about being "invisible",
so that you don't notice the text but can focus on the content.
A big ingredient of this is even-ness. Uneven features
stand out, which is why we have kerning (kill uneven inter-character
spacing) and justification (kill uneven and
unsightly mountain ridges on the right margin) and
hyphenation (kill the unevenness in word spacing that
justification just introduced).

Justified text can make word spacing really nasty.
Ideally you need hyphenation to even things out, which is a notoriously
difficult problem for English -- even TeX makes
mistakes. Not to mention non-English IF... hyphenation
in Swedish is even harder, and more necessary given
its frequent use of compound words.

In IF you have many short paragraphs, and you don't
read them in one long stretch like you do with books.
I find ragged right a lot easier to read in this case.
In fact I find it easier for most computer screen reading,
because I tend to lose track of which line I'm reading
when it's justified. I blame the lack of paper texture
and all that scrolling up and down...
Therefore, I did not deem justification a useful feature.

You may disagree ... so if you really really really want
justification (without hyphenation) it's a simple matter of,
oh, maybe ten or fifteen minutes coding to add.

Probably less time than I spent writing this email

Tor

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

tor.andersson wrote:
>
> I just wanted to announce that I have written
> a new Glk library for Windows and unix, with
> the (rather surprisingly unique) focus
> on achieving good typography.

Nice...

But what about block-justified text? "Good typography" requires it.