• Source
• foundation

A library of common code used by all of the Inform tools. This is version 1.

• Chapter 1: Setting Up

  Absolute basics.

  • Foundation Module - Starting up and shutting down.

  • POSIX Platforms - A version of our operating system interface suitable for POSIX-compliant operating systems.

  • Windows Platform - A version of our operating system interface suitable for Microsoft Windows.

• Chapter 2: Memory, Streams and Collections

  Creating objects in memory, and forming lists, hashes, and text streams.

  • Debugging Log - To write to the debugging log, a plain text file which traces what we're doing, in order to assist those lost souls debugging it.

  • Memory - To allocate memory suitable for the dynamic creation of objects of different sizes, placing some larger objects automatically into doubly linked lists and assigning each a unique allocation ID number.

  • Streams - Support for writing structured textual output, perhaps to the screen, to a file, or to a flexible-sized wide string.

  • Writers and Loggers - Formatted text output to streams.

  • Methods - General support for something approximating method calls.

  • Linked Lists and Stacks - A simple implementation for single-linked lists of objects allocated by Foundation's memory manager, and for last-in-first-out stacks of same.

  • Dictionaries - A simple implementation for a flexible-sized dictionary of key-value pairs.

• Chapter 3: The Operating System

  Dealing with the host operating system.

  • Error Messages - A basic system for command-line tool error messages.

  • Command Line Arguments - To parse the command line arguments with which inweb was called, and to handle any errors it needs to issue.

  • Pathnames - To manage references to locations in the host computer's file system.

  • Filenames - Given the different environments in which we might be running, and the large range of files we may need from within a project folder, it's useful to have a section of code simply to deduce filenames.

  • Case-Insensitive Filenames - On some of the Unix-derived file systems on which Inform runs, filenames are case-sensitive, so that FISH and fish might be different files. This makes extension files, installed by the user, prone to being missed. The code in this section provides a routine to carry out file opening as if filenames are case-insensitive, and is used only for extensions.

  • Shell - Sending commands to the shell, on Unix-like platforms, or simulating this on Windows.

  • Directories - Scanning directories on the host filing system.

  • Time - Managing how we record and use the current time and date.

• Chapter 4: Text Handling

  Reading, writing and parsing text.

  • Characters - Individual characters.

  • C Strings - A minimal library for handling C-style strings.

  • Wide Strings - A minimal library for handling wide C strings.

  • String Manipulation - Convenient routines for manipulating strings of text.

  • Text Files - To read text files of whatever flavour, one line at a time.

  • Tries and Avinues - To examine heads and tails of text, to see how it may inflect.

  • Pattern Matching - To provide a limited regular-expression parser.

• Chapter 5: Generating Websites

  For making individual web pages, or gathering them into mini-sites or ebooks.

  • HTML - Utility functions for writing HTML.

  • Epub Ebooks - To provide for wrapping up sets of HTML files into ePub ebooks.

• Chapter 6: Media

  Examining image and sound files.

  • Binary Files - Routines for reading raw data from binary files.

  • Image Dimensions - These utility routines look at the headers of JPEG and PNG files to find the pixel dimensions of any images supplied by the user for cover art and figures.

  • Sound Durations - These utility routines look at the headers of AIFF, OGG Vorbis or MIDI files to find the durations, and verify that they are what they purport to be.

• Chapter 7: Semantic Versioning

  For reading, storing and comparing standard semantic version numbers.

  • Version Numbers - Semantic version numbers such as 3.7.1.

  • Version Number Ranges - Ranges of acceptable version numbers.

• Chapter 8: Literate Programming

  • Web Structure - To read the structure of a literate programming web from a path in the file system.

  • Bibliographic Data for Webs - To manage key-value pairs of bibliographic data, metadata if you like, associated with a given web.

  • Web Modules - To search for included modules, and track dependencies between them.

  • Build Files - Manages the build metadata for an inweb project.