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pinfo.txt
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PINFO(1) Contributed Software PINFO(1)
NAME
pinfo - play Infocom Inc. adventures
SYNOPSIS
pinfo [-aAehoOpstvV] [-c context] [-i indent] [-l lines] [-m margin]
[-r savefile] [display-flags] [datafile[.dat]]
DESCRIPTION
This program allows most of the popular Infocom text adventures to
be played on your system. The games must be Standard Series for the
interpreter to function correctly; see the file INFOTBL.TXT in the
product release for full details on all Infocom games.
The -h option will tell you what version of Z-Code Interpreter you
need for that adventure. The informational printing options (-h,
-o, -O, -v, and -V) will work with any adventure, but you won't be
able to actually play any games except for Standard Series adven-
tures.
OPTIONS
The command-line arguments allow for screen customizations, and also
various forms of cheating and/or debugging.
Informational
These option will print information on the datafile to the screen.
If any of these are given the game is not actually played, informa-
tion is just printed.
Note that all these options except -h and -V will print information
that you are not supposed to know: examination of this information
on a game you haven't solved could seriously detract from your
enjoyment of the game.
-h print the datafile header
-o print the object names, attributes and links
-O print the object tree
-v print the game vocabulary
-V verify the game data file to ensure it hasn't been corrupted
(to get this same feature while playing use the $verify com-
mand)
Game Play
These options affect different aspects of game play. Some of them
may definitely be considered cheating as they print information
about the internals of the game as you are playing it.
-a display modifications to objects' attributes while playing
-A display value tests of objects' attributes while playing
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PINFO(1) Contributed Software PINFO(1)
-c context
set the number of lines of context to keep at the top of the
screen when paging long output (default is 2)
-e echo each command before executing
-i indent
set the number of spaces in the left margin (default is 0).
Note that only game output text will be indented; input
prompts and input will not.
-m margin
set the number of spaces in the right margin (default is 2)
-p don't page long output
-P set the alternate prompt flag (this flag is not used in all
games)
-r savefile
causes the interpreter to restore the saved game savefile
after starting up.
-s don't print status line
-t display modifications of the object tree while playing
-T set the Tandy Licensing flag (this flag is not used in all
games). On some games this causes printed text to be
slightly different.
Interpreter Escape
Some of the above flags and options may also be modified during game
play via interpreter escapes. Any command beginning with the escape
character (normally ``@'') is assumed to be an interpreter escape
command. The current commands and their values may be listed by
giving just the escape character by itself. Current commands
include:
attr Toggles the attribute printing variable (see -a above)
echo Toggles input line echoing (see -e above)
pager Toggles paged output mode (see -p above)
prompt Toggles the alternate prompt (see -P above)
status Toggles status line printing (see -s above)
tandy Toggles the Tandy license flag (see -T above)
xfers Toggles the object transfer flag (see -t above)
Revision 3.0 22 October 1992 2
PINFO(1) Contributed Software PINFO(1)
Additional escape commands may be defined by individual terminal
interfaces; see below.
TERMCAP
This section gives information specific to the termcap terminal
interface. This interface is for use with UNIX machines or others
with UNIX-compatible termcap or terminfo libraries. In addition to
termcap and terminfo it also supports the termio, termios, and sgtty
line-discipline libraries.
Options
These options are in addition to the above, general options:
-C file
Specifies a file of completion words. If not given no words
are available at startup and any words defined during play
will not be stored. Note pinfo must be compiled with GNU
Readline support to use this option.
-H file
specifies a GNU Readline library history file to be used. If
not given, history is not stored in a file. Note pinfo must
be compiled with GNU Readline support to use this option.
Subshells
The TERMCAP version of the interpreter can invoke commands in a sub-
shell or an interactive subshell in the normal UNIX fashion: i.e.,
if a command's first character is an exclamation mark (bang) (``!'')
then the remainder of the command is passed verbatim to a subshell.
If there is no text after the exclamation mark then an interactive
subshell is invoked.
The value of the environment variable SHELL is used as the subshell,
or /bin/sh if SHELL doesn't exist or is empty.
See the GNU Readline section for an exception when using GNU Read-
line.
GNU Readline
The TERMCAP version of the interpreter contains optional support for
the GNU Readline library. This library allows input line editing
and history retrieval, including full incremental searching and csh-
style command-line editing. By default the key bindings are those
of GNU Emacs, but the library is fully flexible and can be config-
ured to work in vi mode, or you can roll-your-own bindings.
Because csh-style editing uses an exclamation mark as the first
character for history substitutions, in order to get a subshell com-
mand (see above) you should escape the exclamation mark with a back-
slash (``\'') when using the GNU Readline library. For example:
>\!ls -l
In addition to the standard GNU Readline bindings, the single
Revision 3.0 22 October 1992 3
PINFO(1) Contributed Software PINFO(1)
character command ? will cause the interpreter to print the current
history list to the screen.
See the GNU Readline manual for full details.
Completion
If the GNU Readline library is being used, then completion is avail-
able by pressing the TAB key. A list of all possible completions is
available by pressing TAB twice in a row.
During normal game play the interpreter maintains a list of possible
words to complete on. This list is read in from a file specified
with -C (above) at startup and written out to that file at the end
of the game. Modifications to the list are possible via special
interpreter escape commands (see below).
Filename complet