<ulclass="crumbs"><li><ahref="../overview.html">Home</a></li><li><ahref="../inform7n.html">Inform7</a></li><li><ahref="index.html">multimedia</a></li><li><ahref="index.html#P">Preliminaries</a></li><li><b>What This Module Does</b></li></ul></div>
<pclass="purpose">An overview of the multimedia module's role and abilities.</p>
<ulclass="toc"><li><ahref="P-wtmd.html#SP1">§1. Prerequisites</a></li><li><ahref="P-wtmd.html#SP2">§2. Now in glorious Technicolor</a></li></ul><hrclass="tocbar">
<pclass="commentary firstcommentary"><aid="SP1"class="paragraph-anchor"></a><b>§1. Prerequisites. </b>The multimedia module is a part of the Inform compiler toolset. It is
presented as a literate program or "web". Before diving in:
</p>
<ulclass="items"><li>(a) It helps to have some experience of reading webs: see <ahref="../../../inweb/docs/index.html"class="internal">inweb</a> for more.
</li><li>(b) The module is written in C, in fact ANSI C99, but this is disguised by the
fact that it uses some extension syntaxes provided by the <ahref="../../../inweb/docs/index.html"class="internal">inweb</a> literate
programming tool, making it a dialect of C called InC. See <ahref="../../../inweb/docs/index.html"class="internal">inweb</a> for
full details, but essentially: it's C without predeclarations or header files,
and where functions have names like <spanclass="extract"><spanclass="extract-syntax">Tags::add_by_name</span></span> rather than just <spanclass="extract"><spanclass="extract-syntax">add_by_name</span></span>.
uses a module of utility functions called <ahref="../../../inweb/docs/foundation-module/index.html"class="internal">foundation</a>.
For more, see <ahref="../../../inweb/docs/foundation-module/P-abgtf.html"class="internal">A Brief Guide to Foundation (in foundation)</a>.
</li></ul>
<pclass="commentary firstcommentary"><aid="SP2"class="paragraph-anchor"></a><b>§2. Now in glorious Technicolor. </b>This module consists only of three independent plugins, and even those are
very similar to each other:
</p>
<ulclass="items"><li>●<ahref="2-ef.html"class="internal">External Files</a> is a plugin for reading and writing files;
</li><li>●<ahref="2-fgr.html"class="internal">Figures</a> for displaying images; and
</li><li>●<ahref="2-se.html"class="internal">Sound Effects</a> for playing music or other sounds.