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From: Alberto Petrofsky <albatros>
Subject: Re: Java port of Inform Interpreter
Message-ID: <ALBATROS.96Apr12210803@netcom12.netcom.com>
Followup-To: rec.arts.int-fiction
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References: <4kjd1f$jsb@sauron.multiverse.com> <4kh9va$1t9@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 1996 04:08:03 GMT
Lines: 60
Xref: nntp.gmd.de rec.arts.int-fiction:11685 rec.games.int-fiction:13980


  From: russotto@ariel.ct.picker.com (Matthew Russotto)
  Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
  Date: 11 Apr 1996 16:46:39 GMT

  In article <4kh9va$1t9@newsbf02.news.aol.com> russbryan@aol.com (Russ Bryan)
  writes:
  }Once the Java port is up and running through .z8, it might be interesting
  }to see if we can put together a Netscape plug-in which will allow saving
  }and restoring to be done on our own hard drives.

  You'd be better off implementing some native methods to do it.  I'm not sure
  how the plug-ins interface with Java, but my gut feeling is that it couldn't 
  be as clean as native methods.

Either way you lose platform independence and the very nice lack of
any installation steps.

I had been thinking of implementing saves by uploading the data to a
temp file on the server, and then calling
getAppletContext().showDocument() with a url that will cause the
server to send back the data, with some kind of binary mime type.
This will cause netscape to bring up a dialog for the user to choose a
filename, and then save the data there.

To restore, you have an html form with an input element of type file.
Netscape will show a button which can be pressed to bring up a file
dialog.  When the user posts the form, the server sends back a zplet
page with the save file embedded in param elements.

What do you think?  

The obvious downside to this approach is that the data makes a useless
network roundtrip (we'd definitely want to do save compression ala ITF
to cut down transmission times).  Another downside is that it requires
the use of CGI (or equivalent) programs and some temporary file space
on the server.  I don't think you have authorization for that at
www.pond.com, and I don't (yet) at my web host either.  But if the
code gets written, I'm sure a willing site administrator could be
found.

A complementary idea is to have the ability to save games to memory.
This doesn't require any messy trickery, and would improve play value
somewhat, if not as much as permanent saves.  As long as you can leave
a netscape window running for a couple weeks, it would be conceivable
to actually play and solve a game using zplet.

I intend to implement both of these features when I get the time,
hopefully by mid-May.  If anyone would like to beat me to the punch,
then, as The Implementors say, "Feel Free".

  I have it running .z5 and .z8 with most of the common instructions (enough
  to play Jigsaw), but no screen attributes (which does make Jigsaw a bit hard
  to see...)  I'll put the work-in-progress up on 
  http://www.pond.com/~russotto/zplet/ifol.html soon.

Cool!  Can you post a recent snapshot of the source, too?

Thanks,
al

