Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1996 11:55:17 +1000 (EST) From: David Leonard <leonard@dstc.edu.au> To: terry@lambert.org Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: An insane journey (was Re: JDK 1.02) Message-ID: <199608280155.LAA09650@azure.dstc.edu.au>
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In dstc.mail.freebsd.hackers you write:
> > I hear that an Infocom adventure once compiled will run wherever a Zork
> > machine is available.
> Search for "ZIL" and "ZORK" in Yahoo or Lycos... I have been running
> all of the Infocomm stuff on my FreeBSD box since 1.1...
> There are also decompilers, compilers, and programming manuals
> available. 8-).
> > No, no, no, they just provided C++ like interface to the Zork machine
> > (which is object based and uses inheritance internally.)
> The original ZORK was written in MDL ("muddle") on old DEC systems;
> they had one at the county library for a long time -- many library
> database systems were written in MDL.
the interarctive fiction archive at ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive
has a whole bunch of interpreters.
here's a summary on inform/ZIM wrt java (from memory)
the 'inform' compiler is more like an object-oriented assembler! there
is only one kind of inheritance and it seems to be one-level deep max.
The 'data types' in the zork machine include integer, string and object -
all objects in n-ary 'containment' trees.
all objects have the same (perhaps overloaded) library defined
methods and properties. Mind you, its all you really need with the
extensive libraries that are provided. Oh, there is something that looks
like an integer array type, but mostly everything is typeless
when out of context.
The emphasis is on modelling a little world of textually
describable objects. pretty cool. there are no network primitives,
few other system primitives (read, write, save, load, quit) The compiled
images are always very small and often further compressible. Even
with the later versions of the interpreter, the handling of graphics is
quite minimal. It is single threaded, and you cannot poll the keyboard.
I havent noticed inform/jzip in the freebsd ports/packages...
back to the point, inform/ZIM isnt a contender to java :) Imagine
instead of commercial applets, seeing little windows in your browser
with:
You see a brass lamp (giving light) and a New and Improved Thing.
> BUY THING
The New and Improved Thing costs $23.67.
Your credit card number, please?>
However, a zork interpreter in java would be cool..
other contentders to java? if postscript had classes and threads... :)
d
--
David Leonard Developer, DSTC
The University of Queensland david.leonard@dstc.edu.au
http://www.dstc.edu.au/~leonard/
>> Distributed Solutions Event http://www.dstc.edu.au/events/dse96/ <<
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