NEWS file for the Portable Infocom Interactive Fiction datafile interpreter. This file lists the user-visible changes for the latest version. Revision 3.0: ------------- * Released 08 Oct 1992. The changes/enhancements below were made by Paul Smith unless otherwise noted. This version is quite a bit different than 2.0: some of the major changes are listed below. * Defined an interface between the interpreter and display handlers so that new systems could more easily be supported. Many, many changes here. * Rewrote the UNIX interface. Added special support for terminfo, termcap, termio, termios, sgtty, scrolling regions, GNU readline, shell escapes, environment variables, etc. etc. * Added an extremely simple display interface (stream.c) which should work on any system with a C compiler, for those systems which aren't explicitly supported. * Amiga TI (amiga*.[ch]) contributed by Olaf Barthel . * MS-DOS TI (msdos.c) contributed by Mike Threepoint . * Reallocated many of the command-line options. * Tidied most of the information printing modes. * Added scripting support: scripts can go to the printer or to any disk file (currently only Amiga goes to the printer). * Added the ability to support proportional-width fonts for TI's which can do it (currently only the Amiga). * Added support for fixed window creation (used in _Seastalker_). * Added dummy operations to handle #comm, #reco, and #unre commands. These will be fully supported in a future version. * Added -r command option to restore saved games from the command line. * Added a list of default game names and extensions which the interpreter looks for if the game name isn't give on the command line. * Added the ability to generate sound, or play games with sound without crashing if the TI doesn't support sound (currently only the Amiga supports sound). * Implemented support for Tandy License and alternate prompt bit flag setting via the command line (-T and -P respectively). * Implemented an "interpreter escape" command set which allows certain interpreter features to be shown/modified at runtime. * Added the -V command-line option to verify the file on disk (the $verify command) but not play the game. Fixed verify to work on all version games (v 3,4,5,6). * Enhanced the -v output to put the []'s around just the real characters of a bad vocabulary word. * Added support for alternate alphabets in the data file (needed for Shogun): ideas on how to do this were gleaned from Mike Threepoint's _zorkword_ program (v.7). * Added informational printing support (command-line options -h, -o, -O, -v, and -V) for Z code version 4, 5, and 6 data files. Information on the object list data structures for these versions was also obtained from _zorkword_. Also reformatted this output. * Added a -l option to set the number of lines on the screen. * Added a -i option to allow text to be indented from the left margin as well as the right; command prompts are not indented. This may make reading the text a little easier (or not...). * Added code to use getopt(3) for more standard option support. Provided my personal version of getopt(3) for those poor folks whose systems don't have one. * Added new options -c and -m to the command line to allow run-time setting of the # of old lines of context to keep on the screen when deciding when to --More--, and the number of spaces in the right margin respectively. * Put ``pinfocom'' under the GPL. Other points of interest (note these aren't necessarily user visible): * Totally rewrote the paging algorithms in page.c to be faster and simpler. * Rewrote the printing functions to print all text to a buffer and only display it on the screen when a newline is needed. * Did a bunch of performance tuning and removed some bottlenecks (beta testers report this version is significantly faster than 2.0). * ANSI-ified the source if you have an ANSI compiler (added prototypes, used new-style definitions, etc.) * Modified sections of code to create a foundation for v.4,5,6 datafile support in the future. * Large amounts of other bug fixes, enhancements, etc. :) Original InfoTaskForce Version 2.0 (REV_C) ------------------------------------------ * Released 04 Nov 1990. Written by the InfoTaskForce. See the history.txt file in the lastest version of the InfoTaskForce interpreter, version 4.01. Local Variables: mode: Text fill-column: 75 End: