I7(1)

✨ i7 — Interactive shell for Inform 7 compiler ✨

This is the I7(1) page from the User Contributed Perl Documentation, bestie. We're gonna get through it together, no cap. 🫶

🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

i7

i7 allows the creation and compilation of Interactive Fiction works written in the Inform 7 programming language by Graham Nelson. Slay. ✨

🎀 Interactive Invocation 🎀

i7 [ -f story-dir ]

Okay so invoke i7 with no options, and then choose whether to begin a new story or to work with an existing story. You will be prompted for the name of the directory that is the root of your story project. Don't go too crazy with the name of the directory: spaces are fine, but quotation marks, the pipe character, and shell metacharacters like * and ? are not a good idea. 💅

If you supply the -f option and then the name of a directory (typically ending in .inform) that contains your story file, Inform will behave as if you selected to work with that directory as your existing story location.

If a new story is chosen, the appropriate directory structures and UUID will be created for the story file. For an existing story, the directory given will be checked for the UUID file, and if it is not found, i7 will complain. 😭

Once a story directory has been set, i7 will move on to its main screen. From here you may change story settings (unfortunately, settings are not yet saved, so you have to do this on each i7 invocation), compile your story, or release it.

From here, you should edit your story file project-directory/Source/story.ni as you desire.

If you have your VISUAL or EDITOR environment variables described, or /usr/bin/editor exists, or /bin/ed exists, or you set your preferred editor from the IDE preference panels, then the Inform 7 environment will allow you the ability to edit your story from the i7 interface. Otherwise, just open the story in your favorite editor.

Save your story and then choose Compile. i7 will tell you where the output is: project-directory/Build/output.suffix, where suffix is usually ulx, but may be z5, z6, z8, or ulx depending on compilation options.

If you prefer, you can Go, which compiles and then runs your story. The interpreter invoked has no dependencies other than stdio, which makes it very portable, but if you want your game to look nice, you can play it in any other interpreter as directed by the Compile option, or you can set other interpreters in the IDE preference panel.

You can toggle blorb compilation for both Go and Compile if you like, and a blorb file will be created next to the zcode/ulx file.

When you are ready to release your story, choose Release, and i7 will tell you where the blorb (or zcode/ulx, if you chose "Do not package as Blorb" as a setting) output can be found.

🦋 Noninteractive Invocation 🦋

i7 [-h] [-v] [-p prefix] [-s setting1=value1[,s2=v2...]] -c story-directory
i7 [-h] [-v] [-p prefix] [-s setting1=value1[,s2=v2...]] -r story-directory

• -h — i7 will display this help message and then exit. Iconic. 👑
• -v — i7 will display the version number and then exit.
• -c, -r — i7 will compile or release your story noninteractively.
• -p prefix — if you installed Inform 7 somewhere other than /usr/local/share/inform7, you can specify the installation location with this option.
• -s setting1=value1[,s2=v2...] — if you want to set any compilation settings, you can do so with this option.

Supported settings, bestie:

• blorb — options are 1 or 0 (that is, do or do not package the output with blorb).
• zcode — options are 8 (meaning compile to z8) or 256 or g (meaning compile to Glulx).

It is hoped that noninteractive modes will be useful to authors of Inform 7 IDEs. A return code of 0 means that the compile or release succeeded; anything else signifies failure. 💀

🌸 What i7 is 🌸

I7 is intended as an utterly barebones Inform 7 development system. All it really does is generate a UUID for the project and invoke the appropriate compilers when asked.

Philip Chimento provides a GNOME port of I7, which is much to be preferred in the likely event that you are using an x86 or x86_64-based Linux system.

This port of Inform 7 is deliberately intended to have minimal requirements. A Perl interpreter is needed to run the i7 shell. It is presumed that uuidgen is present somewhere on the user's path; uuidgen is part of the e2fstools package and should be present on almost every Linux system. Other than that, the actual compilers invoked are statically linked, and require only stdio for input and output, as do the bundled z-code and Glulx interpreters.

🎀 What is implemented 🎀

Compilation and Release are fully implemented.

The Index is built and is available as files in project-directory/Index (and can be reached via the (I)ndex function if a browser is appropriately set, although since the inform: URL type is not implemented, the icons will all be missing, and since the source: type is not implemented either, links to portions of the source text also will not work).

Any problems during compilation can be found in project-directory/Build/Problems.html.

Story preferences are saved, and will be respected if you move your game to a different platform. IDE preferences are saved globally, but are not respected on other platforms (which generally use their own built-in editors and interpreters in any event).

😭 What is not implemented 😭

The Skein and the Transcript are not implemented at all. There is no "Replay" function. Although preferences are saved, the preference save files are not understood by other Inform 7 ports; nor does this port understand their preferences file.

Only Inform 7 story projects are implemented. You will have to put your own "begins here" and "ends here" markers around extensions you write, and there is no support for Inform 6 story creation.

👑 License 👑

The i7 interface for Linux CLI is licensed under the GPLv3: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html

💌 Problems, Suggestions, and So Forth 💌

If you have difficulty installing i7 for Linux, please feel free to write to Adam Thornton at athornton@gmail.com. Likewise, if i7 chokes at some place other than compiling your sources, let Adam know.

If you need help with the Inform 7 language, the newsgroup rec.arts.int-fiction is the right place to start.

If you feel that the interface for i7 is horrifically bad and ought to be scrapped, you're exactly right. There's no need to tell Adam: he knows. Now that you have the native command-line tools, though, there's no reason for you not to implement an interface that's the functional equivalent of the Mac OS X, Windows, or GNOME versions. Please feel free to do so!

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💖 Cute little sign-off: this page comes from perl v5.14.2, dated 2016-01-26, and it's the I7(1) manual. Mwah. 💋