Notes on this port of Inform

Storage Requirements:

The inform library and compiler will require just under 700K. In addition, the compiler itself will require about 1M of storage on drive C while it is running. You will also need storage for your inform source files and the Z-code output, of course.

The command line

The only way to pass command line arguments to an EXE under Epoc is to use the command line shell "eshell". Unfortunately the Epoc shell appears to map the entire command line up uppercase. This makes it difficult to pass some parameters to inform (such as -x). While you could put the switches in your inform source a better solution is to place create an icl commands file and run inform with the name of this file:

inform (c:\inf\cmds.icl)

You will have to provide the full path to the icl file. You must also provide full paths for any other filenames you use. If inform fails to locate any files, or if any of your output files appear to be missing check that you have used fully qualified path names. Missing output files might be lurking in \System\Programs on the drive you installed inform to. This is caused by the command line shell not setting the working directory for inform.

New options to Inform

This port adds one new switch and one new path to Inform. The console used in this port does not provide any mechanism for capturing what is printed. This means that if there is more than a single screenful of messages printed during a run of inform there is no way to examine the old text. In an attempt to fix this two new elements have been added to ICL which allow everything printed to the console to be logged:

• The switch -L causes all text written to the console to be logged in a text file. The default name for this file is "messages.txt"

• The path "Messages_Name" can be set to a filename to be used as the log.

So, to place the inform help messages in the file "C:\Documents\Inform.txt" use the command line

inform +messages_name=c:\documents\inform.txt -L -h

Installation locations

Most of the package is installed to the \Inform directory on the chosen drive. The main inform binary, however, is installed to \System\Programs on the same drive. Installing to \System\Programs allows eshell to locate the inform executable without having to provide a complete path. Your own sources can go anywhere, of course.

Invoking Eshell

Eshell is Symbians command line environment for Epoc. It is not a standard feature of Epoc, but it is useful for running ports which have not been given a native GUI (like Inform). You will have to obtain a copy (for instance, from the symbian website at http://www.symbian.com). You can start it from system once you have installed it. If you would rather have an icon on the extras bar for it, then you could make a small OPL program to start it up - this minimal OPL program will do it:

INCLUDE "System.oxh"
APP EShell, &20000000
ENDA

PROC Main:
RunExe:("c:\inform\eshell.exe")
ENDP

Enter this into program and compile it and an icon for eshell will be added to the extras bar. A couple of points to note about this program:

• It uses a development UID (&20000000). UIDs in the range 0x01000000 to 0x0fffffff are reserved for development work and should not be used for software being distributed - Symbian allocate UIDs for all applications.

• The path to eshell depends on where you installed it, obviously.

• This application uses the default "question mark" icon. Consult the OPL programming manual if you want to add a fancy icon.

Known issues

• The user interface could be a more Eikon-ish (it could hardly be less eikon-ish).

Release History

• 1999/07/08: Version 1.00: Initial release (labelled Alpha)

• 1999/08/10: Version 1.01: Reapplied the veneer.c patch properly (d'oh) and rewrote the readme in line with comments received.

• 1999/09/14: Version 1.02: Added a new switch and a new path to inform to enable logging of everything output to the console.

End notes and copyrights

Inform and the Inform Library was written by, and is the copyright of, Graham Nelson. © 1994-1999.

The original is available from http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/.

This version of Inform 6.21 was compiled by Glenn Strong and is available from http://www.cs.tcd.ie/Glenn.Strong/epoc/