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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: borderzone
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Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 05:03:13 GMT
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Dan Shiovitz (scythe@u.washington.edu) wrote:
> > I think both questions have been answered, but yes. At present you 
> >cannot do realtime stuff in TADS. (not without really complex
> >machine-dependent hacks anyway) And realtime input is not a feature of 
> >Inform, per se: it's a feature of the Z-machine.

> Has anyone tried out 
> ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/programming/tads/examples/realtime.zip?
> I'd do it myself, but I don't have a c compiler.
> (this does it with user exits, which is kinda a nasty way to do it.)

A really complex machine-dependent hack, one might even call it.

> (vaguely speaking of which, how hard at this point would it be to change
> the TADS spec to allow things like, say, inherent real-time stuff or
> having the game know how big the window it's in is sized to?)

To change the *spec*, you just have to convince Mike. :-)

To change all the interpreters that people are using, that's even more 
effort.

For what it's worth, I state again that it's very easy to add features 
like this *badly*. Remember the thread on redrawing the Z-machine status 
line, when the window is resized?

--Z

-- 

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