1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
|
This file contains tips and additional information about QTads.
On-line Documentation
=====================
The configuration dialog's settings are documented; just click on the
"What's This" button (usually represented by a question mark '?' or a
small 'i' on the top right of the dialog's window-frame) and then on
some of the dialog's controls. You can also right-click on most
controls and select "What's This?".
Registration Keys
=================
Don't Panic! QTads isn't shareware. But some games you'll run with it
might be (or were in the past). If a game can be "unlocked" with a
registration key-file that you received from the game's author, simply
put that file in the game's directory. For example, to play the
registered version of "Losing Your Grip", if the game resides in
/usr/games/if/grip, simply put the file "regkey.txt" (not included in
QTads, of course) in that directory.
Unicode
=======
QTads uses Unicode to draw text when playing Tads 3 games. To be able
to get things like typographical quotes (also called ``curly'' quotes),
typographical dashes (dashes of different lengths) and in general any
Multimedia TADS character entity or Unicode value displayed correctly,
you must use a font that supports these characters. If the font you
select lacks these characters, all you will get when the game tries to
display these characters will be empty boxes. If this happens, select
a different font. You can check for these characters by using the KDE
program "KCharSelect". Start it and cycle through the available fonts
on your system to see which of them display the characters correctly
(the typographical quotes and dashes are in page 32). If nothing helps,
you can disable the use of typographical quotes in the configuration
dialog.
Keep in mind that the font is *not* required to be in Unicode format.
Most fonts out there use either an ISO-Latin encoding, or a
Microsoft-specific one. QTads will automaticly convert the Unicode
characters to the font's internal encoding. For example, you can use
the "Times New Roman" font from a MS-Windows installation in a Unix-X11
system. The only requirement is that the font has the glyphs for these
"special" characters. For example, the aforementioned "Times" font
from Microsoft has them, while the "Lucida Bright" font that comes with
my Linux distribution doesn't.
Note that typographical spaces (en-space and em-space for example)
aren't supported by QTads. There are two reasons for this: a) The
Tads 3 VM does not allow text-only GUI interpreters to display them,
and b) even if the VM allowed it, the Qt library isn't able yet to
display them. Sorry. All I can say is that I'll try to work around
these limitations. Until then, en- and em-spaces will be displayed by
using two ordinary spaces.
Multimedia TADS Character Entities in Tads 2
============================================
Although the Tads 2 VM is not able to use Unicode for I/O (and this is
not likely to change now that we have Tads 3), QTads is nonetheless
able to work around this limitation by using a variation of UTF-8
encoded Unicode for Tads 2 I/O (how this works is described in
src/osqt.cc). This means that QTads can display typographical quotes
and dashes even in Tads 2 games if the font you use supports it (not
only quotes and dashes; the full set of Multimedia TADS character
entities is supported). Note though, that the game itself must support
these characters. If the game just prints normal ASCII (") quotes,
QTads can't change this. Here's an incomplete list of Tads 2 games that
support typographical quotes and/or other special characters:
Arrival
Common Ground
The Erudition Chamber
The Plant
The Recruit
Till Death Makes A Monk-Fish Out Of Me
Here is a very incomplete list of games that do *not* support this
feature and simply use plain ASCII:
Aayela
Babel
Bliss
Deep Space Drifter
Glowgrass
Kaged
Losing Your Grip
Lost New York
Once and Future
Perdition's Flames
Small World
Sunset Over Savannah
The Beetmonger's Journal (only the intro has curly quotes)
The Legend Lives
The Light: Shelby's Addendum
Toonesia
Uncle Zebulons Will
Worlds Apart
Zero Sum Game
As you can see, the majority of Tads 2 games doesn't support these
special characters. Some of them due to the false assumption that only
HTML-enabled interpreters can do this. Others simply because they are
old, written at a time where Tads didn't have any of these features.
If you're a game author and use HTML-tags only on HTML-enabled terps,
please consider updating your old games to print typographical quotes
and dashes even in text-only interpreters, since these interpreters are
able to map these special characters to ASCII equivalents; for example,
if the game tries to print an em-dash, text-mode interpreters will
print two ordinary dashes. There's nothing to gain by not using these
characters in text-only terps. For example, don't do this:
"\"Hello,\" he said. "
but rather:
"<q>Hello,</q> he said. "
This gives interpreters like QTads or WinTADS a chance to use curly
quotes. Other text-only terps will simply use regular ASCII quotes.
Supported HTML Tags
===================
QTads supports a small HTML subset (but still larger than other
text-only interpreters). In particular, it is able to display bold as
well as italic text. Text-color in Tads 3 is also supported.
Horizontal rules are currently displayed using a fixed amount of
underscores, which is a drawback.
Saved Games
===========
QTads can restore games saved with other non-HTML Tads interpreters.
You can restore games saved with WinTADS, MaxTADS, MacTADS, GlkTADS,
and in general any text-only interpreter that has a "Tads" in its name.
Of course it also works the other way around (or at least I hope it
does...) Games saved with Multimedia Tads interpreters (HTML TADS on
Windows and HyperTADS on the Mac) are a different story. Sometimes it
works, sometimes it doesn't; it depends on the game itself. When not,
you'll have to play from the beginning (I hope you still remember how
you got there...)
Games saved with QTads itself are 100% portable between systems. You
can save a game with QTads in Linux and load it with the Mac OS X
version of QTads or vice versa, for example.
Colors
======
The default color scheme on most systems is black text on a white
background. This isn't very comfortable for the human eye. It's best
to change the backround to something less bright (if you want your eyes
to do their job well next morning, that is).
I have more questions!
======================
Just send me an email then. See the README file for an address.
|
