As a result of writing a Glk implementation for RISC OS for "fun",
I've been able to get a version of Andrew Plotkin's Glulxe working on
RISC OS. Glulxe is an interpreter of the Glulx VM format , which is
often used for Interactive Fiction (aka "Text Adventure Games").
At the moment my program is a bit of mess: the !Help simply consists
of a list of all of the phrases I'm legally required to have in my
documentation, significant parts of the Glk specification (which are
"optional") are not implemented (such as sound), it "steals" an
existing filetype (Blorb) rather than using a unique newly allocated
one, and is somewhat lacking in the styleguide-compliance department.
In addition, it depends on a relocatable module (ZapRedraw) that would
need to be separately obtained. (It also is using an unallocated name
(RISCGlulxe), which will clash when someone else ports Glulxe...)
Also it uses a _really_ ugly font, as I haven't got around to
investigating licence conditions for distributing a better one yet.
What do people feel I should do? I seem to have a number of options:
1) Give up entirely?
2) Keep working on it; allocating all the names and filetypes it needs
(if I can figure out what to put in all the fields in !Allocate), and
trying to find and fix bugs in it?
3) Release the current messy/untested version (0.0.0.22) by posting it
on my drobe webspace [msww.drobe.co.uk] , and wait to see if anyone
ever mentions it / complains about it / emails me about it? This has
the advantage that if no one is left who cares about it, I don't waste
any more time on it, but that if people _are_ interested, I might be
motivated to keep working on it...
Thanks in advance for any comments,
--
Matthew
