		       ALAN ADVENTURE LANGUAGE

			     Release 2.6

The Alan System is a special purpose computer language for creating
interactive fiction aka. text adventures. The system consists of a compiler
which compiles Alan source to an intermediate form and an interpreter
that interprets such an intermediate form to enable the playing of the
game.

The Alan language has been designed to be easy to use with little
requirements of programming skills, and to be safe, i.e. a game
produced by the Alan system should not crash on the user.


Distribution
------------

The Alan System is request-ware. The complete system is available
without charge through electronic mail on request from

	alan-request@softlab.se

Send an e-mail message with a single message body line like:

	SEND <platform>

for a distribution package including demos and executables for
<platform>, where <platform> currently must be replaced by one of:

	<platform>	size packed and encoded
			(compiler + interpreter package)
	----------	--------------------------------
	AMIGA		132k + 70k
	SUN4		168k + 106k
	SOLARIS2	167k + 105k
	PC		190k + 154k
	MAC		185k + 127k
	HP		275k + 114k

The current PC version supports MS-DOS (and Windows MS-DOS prompt)
only on 386 and better processors.

You may add the word ALAN or ARUN after the platform name to indicate
if only the compiler or only the interpreter package should be
delivered. Otherwise both will be delivered. E.g. SEND AMIGA ALAN will
only send the compiler package for Amiga, whilst SEND MAC will deliver
both the compiler and the interpreter packages for Mac.

If you already have the interpreter package you need only to request
the compiler package from the above address (SEND <platform> ALAN).

The interpreter package contains the interpreter and some examples and
is freely distributable. The documentation is also freely
distributable (but copyrighted). Please forward this to friends or
copy it onto any FTP-sites. But remember that the compiler may NOT be
copied or redistributed. For complete copying conditions refer to the
file COPYING in the distribution.


Documentation
-------------

You can request the the documentation by sending a single line email
message containing:

	SEND <format>

where <format> should be replaced by TEXT or POSTSCRIPT. Text format
is sent as plain ASCII-text (187K), PostScript is compressed and
uuencoded to 192k. The documentation is also available on WWW as

	<http://www.ida.liu.se/~gorfo/alan>

Archives are distributed in various formats depending on platform.


FTP-sites
---------

The interpreter and documentation packages can also be found on the
Interactive Fiction archive at

	ftp.gmd.de:/if-archive/programming/alan

and its mirrors.

NOTE however that compiler packages are NOT freely distributable, each
delivered package will automatically be registered on the requestor in
order to keep an up-to-date list of current users.


Communication
-------------

If you have any problems requesting or receiving the packages
(especially the compiler) don't hesitate to contact the authors.
You can contact the authors on the following email addresses:

	thoni@softlab.se
	gorfo@ida.liu.se

All communication is welcome!

Happy Authoring!

	The ThoNi & GorFo Adventure Factories


