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<nav role="navigation">
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<h1><a href="index.html">
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<img src="docs-assets/Inform.png" height=72">
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</a></h1>
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<ul><li><a href="index.html"><span class="selectedlink">home</span></a></li>
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</ul><h2>Compiler</h2><ul>
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<li><a href="structure.html">structure</a></li>
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<li><a href="inbuildn.html">inbuild</a></li>
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<li><span class="unlink">inform7</span></li>
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<li><a href="intern.html">inter</a></li>
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<li><a href="services.html">services</a></li>
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<li><a href="secrets.html">secrets</a></li>
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</ul><h2>Other Tools</h2><ul>
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<li><a href="inblorbn.html">inblorb</a></li>
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<li><a href="indocn.html">indoc</a></li>
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<li><a href="inform6.html">inform6</a></li>
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<li><a href="inpolicyn.html">inpolicy</a></li>
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<li><a href="inrtpsn.html">inrtps</a></li>
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</ul><h2>Resources</h2><ul>
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<li><a href="extensions.html">extensions</a></li>
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<li><a href="kits.html">kits</a></li>
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</ul><h2>Repository</h2><ul>
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<li><a href="https://github.com/ganelson/inform"><img src="docs-assets/github.png" height=18> github</a></li>
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</ul><h2>Related Projects</h2><ul>
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<li><a href="../../inweb/index.html">inweb</a></li>
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<li><a href="../../intest/index.html">intest</a></li>
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</ul>
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</nav>
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<main role="main">
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<!--Weave of 'Navigation page for Inform7' generated by Inweb-->
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<div class="breadcrumbs">
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<ul class="crumbs"><li><a href="index.html">Home</a></li><li><b>Navigation page for Inform7</b></li></ul></div>
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<p class="commentary firstcommentary"><a id="SP1" class="paragraph-anchor"></a><b>§1. </b>The inform7 tool is the active part of the Inform apps familiar to end users,
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but it can also be run as a command-line tool outside of the app. See the
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<a href="inform7/M-cu.html" class="internal">Manual (in inform7)</a> and <a href="inform7/M-rc.html" class="internal">Reference Card (in inform7)</a>.
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</p>
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<ul class="items"><li>● The contents page for the inform7 web is here: <a href="inform7/index.html" class="internal">inform7</a>.
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</li><li>● The command-line interface for Inform as a stand-alone tool is implemented
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at <a href="inform7/1-mn.html" class="internal">Main (in inform7)</a>.
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</li></ul>
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<p class="commentary">Note that the inform7 is the largest of the three compiler tools, since it
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contains the other two tools in their entirety.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> See <a href="inbuildn.html" class="internal">inbuildn</a> and
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<a href="intern.html" class="internal">intern</a> for details of those. But inform7 also contains modules of its own
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which are not found elsewhere, and those are the ones described on this page.
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See <a href="structure.html" class="internal">structure</a> for the bigger picture: the modules unique to inform7 perform
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just one simple-looking part of the compilation flow diagram —
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</p>
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<pre class="displayed-code all-displayed-code code-font">
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<span class="plain-syntax"> </span><span class="element-syntax">syntax</span><span class="plain-syntax"> </span><span class="element-syntax">tree</span>
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<span class="plain-syntax"> |</span>
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<span class="plain-syntax"> | </span><span class="function-syntax">INFORM7</span><span class="plain-syntax"> </span><span class="element-syntax">Stages</span><span class="plain-syntax"> </span><span class="constant-syntax">2</span><span class="plain-syntax"> </span><span class="element-syntax">to</span><span class="plain-syntax"> </span><span class="constant-syntax">4</span><span class="plain-syntax">/5</span>
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<span class="plain-syntax"> |</span>
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<span class="plain-syntax"> \|/</span>
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<span class="plain-syntax"> </span><span class="element-syntax">Inter</span><span class="plain-syntax"> </span><span class="element-syntax">tree</span>
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</pre>
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<ul class="footnotetexts"><li class="footnote" id="fn:1"><p class="inwebfootnote"><sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> Or at least, all except for their command-line interfaces.
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<a href="#fnref:1" title="return to text"> ↩</a></p></li></ul>
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<p class="commentary firstcommentary"><a id="SP2" class="paragraph-anchor"></a><b>§2. </b>The <a href="core-module/index.html" class="internal">core</a> module is an organiser of what happens during Stages 2 to 5,
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which involve very many sub-stages. It includes a form of scheduler, queueing
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up individual tasks; it provides general mechanisms for issuing problem messages;
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and also a "plugin" architecture enabling language features to be added. Most
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Inform users think of rooms, map connections and so on as being built in to
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the language itself, but internally we take the view that there is a purist
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Basic Inform language dealing only in data, and then a set of plugins to add
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domain-specific gadgets to that language.
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</p>
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<ul class="items"><li>● Contents page of web: <a href="core-module/index.html" class="internal">core</a>.
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</li><li>● Detailed overview: <a href="core-module/P-wtmd.html" class="internal">What This Module Does (in core)</a>.
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</li></ul>
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<p class="commentary firstcommentary"><a id="SP3" class="paragraph-anchor"></a><b>§3. </b>The <a href="assertions-module/index.html" class="internal">assertions</a> module looks at sentences in the source text outside of
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rules/phrases: often copular sentences like "X is a number which varies",
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but also imperative forms like "Understand ... as ..." or rule/phrase headers
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such as "To ...:".
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</p>
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<ul class="items"><li>● Contents page of web: <a href="assertions-module/index.html" class="internal">assertions</a>.
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</li><li>● Detailed overview: <a href="assertions-module/P-wtmd.html" class="internal">What This Module Does (in assertions)</a>.
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</li></ul>
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<p class="commentary firstcommentary"><a id="SP4" class="paragraph-anchor"></a><b>§4. </b>The <a href="values-module/index.html" class="internal">values</a> module parses descriptions of values and their kinds, and
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contains in particular the "S-parser" (parsing fragments of the AST called
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"specifications"), and the Inform typechecker, a behemoth of an algorithm
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called "Dash". Typechecking in Inform is quite unlike that used in most
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programming languages, partly because types are often only implied in the
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language, partly because natural language blurs lines between values and types
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considerably in any case.
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</p>
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<ul class="items"><li>● Contents page of web: <a href="values-module/index.html" class="internal">values</a>.
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</li><li>● Detailed overview: <a href="values-module/P-wtmd.html" class="internal">What This Module Does (in values)</a>.
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</li></ul>
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<p class="commentary firstcommentary"><a id="SP5" class="paragraph-anchor"></a><b>§5. </b>The <a href="knowledge-module/index.html" class="internal">knowledge</a> module manages variables, properties, instances and so
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forth, and stores knowledge of differing certainty about their values in the
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form of "inferences".
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</p>
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<ul class="items"><li>● Contents page of web: <a href="knowledge-module/index.html" class="internal">knowledge</a>.
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</li><li>● Detailed overview: <a href="knowledge-module/P-wtmd.html" class="internal">What This Module Does (in knowledge)</a>.
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</li></ul>
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<p class="commentary firstcommentary"><a id="SP6" class="paragraph-anchor"></a><b>§6. </b>The <a href="imperative-module/index.html" class="internal">imperative</a> module is almost a compiler-within-a-compiler, since it
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parses and generates Inter code from the bodies of phrase and rule definitions.
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More modern compiler-concepts such as closures and generics do make tiny
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appearances here, but really it's an old-school imperative compiler.
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</p>
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<ul class="items"><li>● Contents page of web: <a href="imperative-module/index.html" class="internal">imperative</a>.
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</li><li>● Detailed overview: <a href="imperative-module/P-wtmd.html" class="internal">What This Module Does (in imperative)</a>.
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</li></ul>
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<p class="commentary firstcommentary"><a id="SP7" class="paragraph-anchor"></a><b>§7. </b>The <a href="runtime-module/index.html" class="internal">runtime</a> module generates Inter code for everything other than
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functions. This can be quite elaborate: whereas, say, a global variable in
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Inform is likely to need only a single Inter instruction, something like
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a various-to-various relation may need a large body of Inter arrays,
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properties or active code in order to function at runtime. <a href="runtime-module/index.html" class="internal">runtime</a> also
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writes copious and diligent metadata into the Inter tree, so that the index
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can later be generated, and to make the tree more fathomable to the code
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generator (or other pipeline stages) later on.
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</p>
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<p class="commentary">While it contains no tricky or controversial algorithms, this is in some ways the
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least satisfactory module in Inform, because it remains undecided exactly what
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developments in linking together Inform source text may follow. Developers
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should probably not assume that the conventions used by <a href="runtime-module/index.html" class="internal">runtime</a> are stable,
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for the moment.<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" rel="footnote">2</a></sup>
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</p>
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<ul class="items"><li>● Contents page of web: <a href="runtime-module/index.html" class="internal">runtime</a>.
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</li><li>● Detailed overview: <a href="runtime-module/P-wtmd.html" class="internal">What This Module Does (in runtime)</a>.
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</li></ul>
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<ul class="footnotetexts"><li class="footnote" id="fn:2"><p class="inwebfootnote"><sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" rel="footnote">2</a></sup> If we ever do go down the road of a full-on linker, issues like this would
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be part of what is nowadays called "ABI stability".
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<a href="#fnref:2" title="return to text"> ↩</a></p></li></ul>
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<p class="commentary firstcommentary"><a id="SP8" class="paragraph-anchor"></a><b>§8. </b>The <a href="if-module/index.html" class="internal">if</a> module consists of an extensive suite of plugins (see <span class="extract"><span class="extract-syntax">core</span></span>
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above) to add interactive fiction features to the Basic Inform language.
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Support for scenes, a spatial map, a protagonist character, and so on are
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all to be found here.
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</p>
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<ul class="items"><li>● Contents page of web: <a href="if-module/index.html" class="internal">if</a>.
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</li><li>● Detailed overview: <a href="if-module/P-wtmd.html" class="internal">What This Module Does (in if)</a>.
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</li></ul>
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<p class="commentary firstcommentary"><a id="SP9" class="paragraph-anchor"></a><b>§9. </b>The <a href="multimedia-module/index.html" class="internal">multimedia</a> module consists of a few plugins (see <span class="extract"><span class="extract-syntax">core</span></span> above)
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to add images, sound files and external file-handling to the Basic Inform
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language.
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</p>
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<ul class="items"><li>● Contents page of web: <a href="multimedia-module/index.html" class="internal">multimedia</a>.
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</li><li>● Detailed overview: <a href="multimedia-module/P-wtmd.html" class="internal">What This Module Does (in multimedia)</a>.
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</li></ul>
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<p class="commentary firstcommentary"><a id="SP10" class="paragraph-anchor"></a><b>§10. </b>As noted above, inform7 contains many other modules: all of those from
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<a href="intern.html" class="internal">intern</a>, all of those from <a href="inbuildn.html" class="internal">inbuildn</a>, and all of the <a href="services.html" class="internal">services</a>,
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together with the ubiquitous <a href="../../inweb/foundation-module/index.html" class="internal">foundation</a> library.
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</p>
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