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From: klooster@dutiag.twi.tudelft.nl (Marnix Klooster)
Subject: Interactive Fiction World vision
Message-ID: <Cqo3pG.Jy@dutiws.twi.tudelft.nl>
Sender: news@dutiws.twi.tudelft.nl (TWI News Administration)
Organization: Delft University of Technology
Date: Tue, 31 May 1994 12:51:16 GMT
Lines: 89

Last night, I had a vision...


 "Welcome, welcome!  This way please, and I'll give you a short tour
of these famous buildings.  For these are the offices of the
Interactive Fiction Writers and Publishers Association, the home of
fiction that you can _experience_, the home of the books of the
future.

 "To your right, you see pictures and statues of the Greats of the
Past.  Scott Adams, Stu Galley, Phil Goetz, Graham Nelson, Dave
Baggett, they're all there, and more.  They're placed here, so that we
will not forget where it all began.

 "This is the library.  Here we have virtually all articles and
discussions about IF, and of course copies of all published works of
IF.  In the reading room, you can read your choice of IF, or connect
to Multi User Worlds.

 "Please be quiet here, people, 'cause this is where the Association's
writers work.  Maybe we can have a peep at an author working...  Hello
mr. Wilson, mind if we take a quick look?  Thank you... you see,
folks, papers all around, a computer terminal running a
worldprocessor.. No, sir, please leave that alone, that is not fit for
publication yet.  OK, now to the editor's wing.

 "Here, all the drafts are read and judged.  You must know that there
is in fact a large number of editors.  This is because there are many
different kinds of publications: We have short stories, novels,
anthologies, series, samplers, journals, literary criticism, regular
and irregular newspapers, and much more.  Everything that is deemed to
be of good quality or of interest to the general public gets
published, ISB Number and all.

 "To your left is the beta-test office.  When an author has written a
draft, he or she has the option of sending it to some people, asking
for their opinion on the work.  All this information is handled there.

 "And to conclude this tour, you can experience IF for yourself.  Here
I have a short story, especially written for you, visitors of the
offices of the IFWAPA.  There's one for everyone, here you are.  Thank
you for your visit, have fun, and don't forget your guide.  Thanks
ma'am."


When I got back to earth, I realised that it would be a challenge to
build an interactive environment (MUD-like, if you will), dedicated to
IF.  This would be a center of knowledge and information about IF.

Writers can work there on their IF.  Multiple authors can cooperate on
a project. Readers can read completed works.  Beta-testers can read
drafts, and comment on them.  Completed works can be converted to
stand-alone programs for different computing environments.

To implement something like this, there are some things that must be
considered carefully.  Among them are:

USER INTERFACE.  The look-and-feel of this interactive environment
should be a bit like in the above vision.  View IF as a branch of
story-telling.  Have a library.  Have editors.  Make a clean
distinction between published and non-published works.  Maybe we can
even get ISB Numbers for works of IF.  [There are electronic journals
that have an ISSN, so it should be possible.]

IMPLEMENTATION.  There should be a thorough discussion on the way in
which IF is written and read.  Should everybody use the same
(implementation) language?  Or must there be a provision to read
and/or write TADS books?


IMHO, we should start with the language.  This language should offer
an author with the means to write her world.  Make it general.  Have
options for multiple readers.  Have options for concurrent reading and
writing (as in current MU*'s).  Make it computing-environment-
independent, i.e. no artificial limits, no maxints.  Discuss this
language with the people who are going to use it.

Then we can start writing worldprocessors, and worldreaders.  And
implement IFWAPA.

Comments?

A Dieu,

 <><
Marnix
-- 
Marnix Klooster
klooster@dutiag.twi.tudelft.nl
