Zoom 1.1.5 is finally out! This version fixes several issues relating to Snow Leopard and Lion, and updates the git and glulxe interpreters to the latest versions. This is particularly important for git, as 1.2.4 (which was shipped with Zoom 1.1.4) had some critical bugs that could result in corrupted save games.

I’ve also brought the way that the source is published up to date: you can now get the latest version at any time via git (no, not that git, the other one). You can fetch it like this:


git clone http://code.logicalshift.co.uk/zoom/zoom.git


This is primarily a maintenance release, with various bugfixes accumulated over the last year and updates to the interpreters. It has one major new feature: you can now choose which glulx interpreter to use in the preferences – either the faster git or the reference glulxe.

UPDATE: Zoom 1.1.4 had a minor bug that would cause some glk games to receive too many Redraw events. I’ve updated this release to version 1.1.4.1 to fix this.

Leigh Ribak wasn’t satisfied with this answer, though, and has done a pretty good job of transferring the WinFrotz BZ font into a Mac compatible .dfont file: you can download it here.

To use the font with Zoom, double click it and choose ‘Install Font’, then go to Zoom’s preferences and set it as the symbolic font. The font is displayed as a sample, so the name isn’t exactly legible but luckily thanks to its name it will probably be right at the end of the list.

You may also need to play with the interpreter setting in the Game tab if you’ve changed it: set it to DECsystem-20 if you want to be asked by BZ whether or not to use the new font.

Even so, I plan to port CocoaGlk as soon as I get my hands on it, at least assuming the requirements for distributing free software aren’t too onerous. $99 for a key doesn’t sound too bad to me, anyway.

I’m not entirely sure what to expect; I haven’t played around with jailbreaking my iPhone, so I’ll be going in blind. What I think is likely, however, is that half of CocoaGlk will port just fine: that is, the GlkClient framework that interfaces with the interpreters. What is less certain is how well the UI half will port: that is, GlkView. If NSTextView is ported, and the typesetter behaves the same way, then it’s going to be really easy to get the UI working in some manner, and probably not that hard to support all the features of blorb.

Getting games onto the phone is also a bit of a challenge. I think that taking some of Zoom’s existing inventory management and connecting to IFDB might be a good idea.

I’ll post a beta when I get things working: I imagine a glulx or frotz-based interpreter is likely to be released first. I’ve been thinking about doing something with LLVM to JIT games; something that would be a curiosity on the fast machines that CocoaGlk runs on at the moment, but which could be vital to running games on the much slower iPhone.

Read on for the complete change list and some screenshots…

Changes in this version:

• I’ve switched back to use the Carbon API for speech synthesis, as the Cocoa API fails to take account of the preferences the user has set in the speech preference pane.
• Fixed various bugs that were preventing Zoom from running glk-based games on Leopard.
• Made clear_attr and set_attr less fussy about being called on object 0 for version 3 games. This works around a bug in Infocom’s Witness.
• Added a new set of options to the Speech menu to make it easier to navigate around previous moves, and to make it possible to ask Zoom to stop speaking
• Added a plugin manager that makes it possible to check for updates to the interpreters that Zoom can use to play games and install them:

• Added support for IFDB ‘signpost’ files to support downloading and installing any missing plugins before loading a game.
• Added a browser for IFDB:

• Fixed an issue that was preventing glk intepreters from working on Leopard
• Added a QuickLook plugin that allows you to preview saved games.

• Added CoreAnimation to certain transitions: popping up the ‘downloading’ window, disappearing the controls when transitioning to the IFDB and when transitioning to full-screen mode.
• Fixed a long-standing bug where the interpreter number would be ignored (this makes it possible to adjust it to fix the graphics in Beyond Zork, for example)
• Fixed a crash that could occur when adjusting the colours in the preferences window.
• Changed many icons so that they have a 512×512 alternative under Leopard to improve the display when using CoverFlow – this includes the main Zoom icon and the icons for Glulx, HUGO and TADS games.

Zoom 1.1.1 fixes these issues and adds many new features to the plug-in system so now Glulx, TADS and Hugo games all get the same save-game features as Z-Code games, at least as far as is possible with their respective interpreters.

Read on for the complete change log. Zoom 1.1.1 is brought to you by the revision number 2691.

Changes in this release:

• CocoaGlk upgraded to version 1.0.3
• Used Sparkle to add a ‘Check for Updates’ feature
• Glk plugins now create save games in a special ‘glksave’ package, which means that they now have the same features as Z-Code save games (Zoom keeps track of which save game goes with which story file, save games show up in the iFiction window, skein and transcript are resumed after restoring, etc). Note that limitations in the design of the Glulx and Hugo interpreters means that it is not possible to make these load a save game immediately on startup.
• ‘Restore’ from a game will now restore the skein as well as the game state, so now it’s not necessary to use the iFiction window to load save games in order to restore the skein as well.
• The ‘Filter’ and ‘Save’ buttons in the iFiction window now change colour to indicate when there are filters in effect or saved games available.
• Added opt+S, opt+I and opt+F keyboard shortcuts for switching between the three views in the top of the iFiction window
• Games with no iFiction metadata, or missing metadata for the ‘Group’ column will now automatically get a group indicating the type of game (Z-Code, TADS, Hugo)
• Text-to-speech now works with Glk TADS (which incorrectly uses put_buffer to write to windows)
• Bug fixes:
  • TADS 3 games now save and restore correctly
  • TADS 3 games should now restore much more quickly
  • Preferences are now properly set in the X11 version so you won’t see black text on a black background.
  • Saved game states should now correctly identify the associated Z-Code game when it is being identified by a UUID instead of by checksum and serial number
  • Fixed an issue that was preventing transcripts from saving properly in any Glk game
  • Dragging and dropping a story file that’s managed by a plugin to the iFiction window will now deal correctly with the story’s metadata.
  • Fixed a weird issue where if you tried to rename a plug-in game in the iFiction window Zoom would move it, but would then immediately forget the new filename
  • Fixed an issue that could occur if the organiser directory contained an empty directory that used to contain a valid game. (This mainly caused Zoom to spam the console with messages about not being able to find a story with a particular ID)
  • Fixed an issue that was making it possible to use the iFiction window to open too many copies of a story
  • Fixed an issue in CocoaGlk that could sometimes cause Hugo save games to become corrupted
  • Fixed an issue that could cause a crash if an abbreviations table is absent from a game.

Read on for the complete list of changes.

Changes in this version:

• Bug fixes
  • Opening a file that doesn’t exist for random access will now create the file (something that’s required by the glk specification but probably isn’t a good idea in practice)
  • Fixed a memory leak in the More view
  • Fixed a potential infinite loop when cancelling sessions
  • Fixed an issue that could cause the layout engine to run past the end of the text in a view
  • Fixed a memory leak in the GlkPreferences object
  • Fixed a crash that could occur if the glk window was closed before the startup image had finished fading out
  • gestalt_Unicode now returns the right value
  • Buffered put character events are no longer concatenated into put string events if they have a value less than 32 (this could cause file corruption in some circumstances due to the way OS X handles these in NSString objects)
  • putBuffer: events sent to windows now send strings via the automation system – this ensures that broken interpreters that use these instead of putString: events will work with things like skeins, text to speech, etc.
• The GlkView delegate has been updated to make it possible to customize how files are prompted for.
• Added cocoaglk_set_immediate_style_hint(), cocoaglk_clear_immediate_style_hint() and cocoaglk_set_custom_text_attributes() functions to make it possible to implement more complicated font/styling models than the standard glk model.
• Added cocoaglk_get_stream_for_key() to make it possible to pass in extra streams to a client beyond just the main input stream (this is intended for use with clients that can restore a saved game as well as loading an actual game)
• When file streams belonging to the server process are opened for reading in the client, they are now buffered to increase performance for small reads.

GlkTerm uses the CocoaGlk library to provide a client interface for developing Glk applications. This allows you to develop a Glk application using XCode or the command line and run it immediately.

I’m going to write some more about developing glk applications for CocoaGlk, but to get started, you’ll need to link to GlkClient framework (included in the download). You will also need to modify your glk source code a bit, and write a main function.

Instead of just including glk.h, you should include the glk.h file for CocoaGlk using:

{[.include-glk /enzymes/chili-cplusplus.php]}

You might also add a glk.h file to your project including just that line if you don’t want to edit your sources. This is required because of the way frameworks work on OS X.

CocoaGlk doesn’t provide a main function, as it is not possible to have a main function in a shared library in OS X, so you’ll need to add this yourself. Unless you’re doing something really unusual, this will always be the same:

{[.glk-main /enzymes/chili-cplusplus.php]}

If you just want to play with GlkTerm, the version of glulxe included with Zoom may be a good starting point. Use the Finder to display the contents of the Zoom package, then navigate to the Glulxe plugin, and display the contents of that to find the client executable. The easiest way to get it to run is to launch GlkTerm and then drag the glulxe-client file to a terminal window.

There is also an updated manual for this version of Zoom.