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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [TADS] portability
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Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 17:13:06 GMT
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Dan Shiovitz (scythe@u.washington.edu) wrote:
> Well, I don't precisely mean portability, but I wasn't quite sure of a 
> better choice is.

"Flexibility", I guess.

> The main problem is the status line.  It's ugly.  As far as I can
> tell, the use of the room's statusLine property on the left and
> whatever setscore calls on the right is actually hardwired.
> Furthermore, there's no way to expand the status line to being more
> than one line long.  Are these both true statements?

Yes.

>  The first is
> get-aroundable by just increasing the size of the string argument to
> setscore by padding it with blanks, but it seems silly that I have to
> in the first place.  The second is not get-aroundable, keeping me from
> doing compass roses, putting menu instructions up there ala Inform, or
> just displaying more than 80 chars of information. 

It may not be 80. The Mac TR (and MaxTADS) will cheerfully display 
tremendous strings if you make the window wide enough. (Or, contrariwise, 
chop them off if you shrink the window.) I'm not sure how the Unix 
versions behave, but it may be similar.

> The other thing I'm currently wrestling with is clearscreen.  It has
> very odd behavior at least in the version I'm running (on DOS),
> including wiping the scrollback buffer and putting the cursor about
> ten lines from the bottom after it clears. 

Due to user demand (Hello, User!) I've put in an option in MaxTADS to 
*not* clear the scrollback buffer when clearscreen() is called. (If this 
option is set, clearscreen() simply prints out a windowful of blank 
lines.) 

> So, um, anyone know workarounds for either of these?  As far as I can 
> tell, neither are "fixable," precisely.  Is there hope for getting
> these changed in future versions of TADS?  

That's up to Mike Roberts.

I advise caution. The Z-machine status line is flexible but not really 
designed for the era of GUIs; if the same thing happens to the TADS 
status line, MaxTADS will have to split into two separate windows, and 
I'll have to ignore a round of complaints about it. :(

PS: It's done. I'm waiting to hear back from Mike about the wording of 
the freeware license.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
