From: David Griffith Date: Mon, 22 May 2023 23:49:48 +0000 (-0700) Subject: Cleaned up dfrotz.6 manpage. X-Git-Url: https://scope-eye.net/git/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=a4dd233d43ce8ee557f16db4cd7b5f0fbc919e1a;p=liskon_frotz.git Cleaned up dfrotz.6 manpage. --- diff --git a/doc/dfrotz.6 b/doc/dfrotz.6 index 9556b59..b0e766f 100644 --- a/doc/dfrotz.6 +++ b/doc/dfrotz.6 @@ -20,17 +20,16 @@ will check for a Blorb file with the same base name but an extension of or .B .zblorb and load it if found. - +.P If the file supplied on the command line is a Blorb file, then .B Frotz will check to see if a Z-code file is contained within. If not found, then .B Frotz will complain and exit. - +.P An alternatively-named Blorb file can be supplied as the optional second parameter to the command line invocation. - .SH DESCRIPTION .B Frotz is a Z-Machine interpreter. The Z-machine is a virtual machine designed @@ -38,29 +37,34 @@ by Infocom to run all of their text adventures. It went through multiple revisions during the lifetime of the company, and two further revisions (V7 and V8) were created by Graham Nelson after the company's demise. The specification is now quite well documented; this version of Frotz -supports version 1.0. +supports version 1.1. See +.B Z-MACHINE STANDARDS +below. .P -This version of Frotz fully supports all these versions of the Z-Machine -except for version 6. Version 6 is semi-supported by displaying the -outlines of V6 graphics with the picture number in the bottom-right -corner. +This version of +.B Frotz +fully supports all these versions of the Z-Machine except for version 6. +Version 6 is semi-supported by displaying the outlines of V6 graphics +with the picture number in the bottom-right corner. .P This manpage is for Frotz with the dumb interface. Dumb Frotz does not -support sound-effects, graphics, or colors. - +support sound-effects, graphics, colors, or even screen-handling (for +instance, +.BR curses (3)). +Its purpose is to provide a Z-machine interpreter with the absolute +minimum system requirements or for applications where those features are +not needed .SH OPTIONS .TP .B \-a Watch attribute setting. Setting and clearing of attributes on objects will be noted in debugging messages. - .TP .B \-A Watch attribute testing. Every time the Z-machine tests an attribute value, the test and the result will be reported. - .TP .B \-f [irc | ansi | normal] Select type of format codes. Dumb Frotz can optionally mark up its @@ -73,14 +77,12 @@ terminals are supported. Specifying .B normal or not using this flag at all will result in Dumb Frotz's normal behavior of not using any sort of markup. - .TP .B \-h N Text height. Every N lines, a MORE prompt will be printed. Use of the .B \-m option renders this option moot. - .TP .B \-i Ignore fatal errors. If a Z-Machine interpreter encounters a zcode error @@ -91,32 +93,26 @@ there that cause fatal errors because the authors were careless and used an interpreter that didn't properly check for errors. This option is intended to get around such bugs, but be warned that Strange Things may happen if fatal errors are not caught. - .TP .B \-I N Set the interpreter number. Infocom designed the Z-machine such that a game could tell on what kind of machine the interpreter was running. See INTERPRETER NUMBER below. - .TP .B \-L When the game starts, load this saved game file. - .TP .B \-m Turn off MORE prompts. This can be desirable when using a printing terminal. - .TP .B \-o Watch object movement. This option enables debugging messages from the interpreter which describe the moving of objects in the object tree. - .TP .B \-O Watch object location. These debugging messages detail the locations of objects in the object tree. - .TP .B \-p Plain ASCII output only. This inhibits the output of accented letters @@ -124,23 +120,22 @@ and other characters from the Latin-1 character set, replacing them with reasonable alternatives. This may be necessary on devices lacking these characters. The OE/oe dipthongs are missing from the Latin-1 set. These are handled as well. - .TP .B \-P -Alter the piracy opcode. The piracy opcode was never used by Infocom. -This switch is really only useful for those who like to toy around with -Z-code. - +Alter the +.I @piracy +opcode. The +.I @piracy +opcode was never used by Infocom. This switch is really only useful for +those who like to toy around with Z-code. .TP .B \-q Quiet mode. Suppress startup messages such as "Loading zork1.z3". - .TP .B \-r xxx Set runtime options. This option may be used repeatedly. See \.B CONFIGURATION below. There is no need to prepend a backslash. - .TP .B \-R Restricted read/write. Reading and writing files will be restricted @@ -156,23 +151,22 @@ restricted environment, by a front end, or by a chatbot. This option will cause Frotz to write or read only to the provided path and nowhere else. Then the controlling process can then watch that directory for changes and need not worry about someone scribbling or snooping who-knows-where. - .TP .B \-s N Set the random number seed value. The given seed value is used as the -initial seed value on every restart. This is helpful for testing games -like +initial seed value on every restart. By default, the random number +generator is initialized based on the system clock; this allows you to +make the random number generator predictable, for use in recorded +scripts or debugging. For instance, .B Curses -which make random decisions before the first input (such that the hot -key Alt\-S does not really help). - +makes random decisions before the first input (such that the hot key +Alt\-S does not really help). .TP .B \-S N Set the transcript width. By default your transcript files are formatted to a width of 80 columns per line, regardless of the current text width. This switch allows you to change this setting. In particular, use \-S 0 to deactivate automatic line splitting in transcript files. - .TP .B \-t Sets the Z-machine's @@ -180,47 +174,43 @@ Sets the Z-machine's which may affect the behavior of certain Infocom games. For example, Zork I pretends not to have sequels, and Witness has its language toned down. - .TP .B \-u N Sets the number of slots available for Frotz's multiple undo hotkey (see below). This defaults to twenty, which should be sufficient for most purposes. Setting too high a number here may be dangerous on machines with limited memory. - .TP .B \-w N Manually sets the text width. This should not be necessary except in special circumstances. - .TP .B \-x Expand the abbreviations "g", "x", and "z" to "again", "examine", and "wait". This switch is for use with old Infocom games that lack these common abbreviations which were introduced in later games. Use it with caution: A few games might use "g", "x" or "z" for different purposes. - .TP .B \-v Show version information and exit. This will display the version of Frotz, some information about what's enabled and what's not, the commit -date of the source code, and a git(1) hash of that commit. - +date of the source code, and a +.BR git (1) +hash of that commit. .TP .B \-Z N Error checking mode. .br -0 = don't report errors. + 0 = don't report errors. .br -1 = report first instance of an error. + 1 = report first instance of an error. .br -2 = report all errors. + 2 = report all errors. .br -3 = exit after any error. + 3 = exit after any error. .br Default is 1 (report first instance of an error). - .SH INTERPRETER NUMBER The interpreter number is a setting in the Z-machine header which is used to tell the game on what sort of machine the interpreter is @@ -229,7 +219,7 @@ a given Infocom-produced game. Should you want to override the number, the .B \-I option is available. - +.P An interpreter should choose the interpreter number most suitable for the machine it will run on. In Versions up to 5, the main consideration is that the behaviour of 'Beyond Zork' depends on the interpreter @@ -239,57 +229,34 @@ depend on interpreter number in many ways: moreover, some story files expect to be run only on the interpreters for a particular machine. There are, for instance, specifically Amiga versions. The DECSystem-20 was Infocom's own in-house mainframe. - +.P For Infocom's four V6 games, the interpreter number will be automatically chosen based on the title and release number. Of course, this can be overridden at the command line. - +.P Infocom used the following interpreter numbers: - -.PP -.BR 1 -.BR \ \ DECSystem\ 20 - -.PP -.BR 2 -.BR \ \ Apple\ IIe - -.PP -.BR 3 -.BR \ \ Macintosh - -.PP -.BR 4 -.BR \ \ Amiga - -.PP -.BR 5 -.BR \ \ Atari\ ST - -.PP -.BR 6 -.BR \ \ IBM\ PC - -.PP -.BR 7 -.BR \ \ Commodore 128 - -.PP -.BR 8 -.BR \ \ Commodore 64 - -.PP -.BR 9 -.BR \ \ Apple\ IIc - -.PP -.BR 10 -.BR \ \ Apple\ IIgs - -.PP -.BR 11 -.BR \ \ Tandy\ Color - +.IP +.B 1 \ DECSystem\ 20 +.br +.B 2 \ Apple\ IIe +.br +.B 3 \ Macintosh +.br +.B 4 \ Amiga +.br +.B 5 \ Atari\ ST +.br +.B 6 \ IBM\ PC +.br +.B 7 \ Commodore 128 +.br +.B 8 \ Commodore 64 +.br +.B 9 \ Apple\ IIc +.br +.B 10 Apple\ IIgs +.br +.B 11 Tandy\ Color .SH CONFIGURATION Unlike it's curses-using or SDL-using siblings, @@ -301,7 +268,6 @@ is running. .P .SS General Commands - .TP .B \ehelp Show help message. @@ -443,7 +409,6 @@ A blank line emitted as part of span compression. .B \~ (blank) Any other output line. - .SH UNICODE .B Dumb Frotz supports Unicode glyphs by way of UTF-8 if the terminal used supports @@ -453,11 +418,11 @@ manually tell an xterm to switch into UTF-8 mode by holding CTRL and the right mouse button to bring up the VT FONTS menu. Depending on how xterm was installed, you may see an option for "UTF-8 Fonts" which will allow Unicode to be properly displayed. - +.P Getting normal xterm to behave like this all the time can vary from system to system. Other terminal emulators have their own ways of being set to use UTF-8 character encoding. - +.P If you are using some sort of wrapper around .B dfrotz, and want to make use of Unicode, it is the responsibility of the wrapper @@ -469,11 +434,11 @@ ISO-8859-1 or ISO-8859-15 (Latin-1 or Latin-9) character sets. ISO-8859-15 is more or less identical to ISO-8859-1 except that the OE/oe dipthongs are supported, replacing the seldom-used 1/2 and 1/4 glyphs. See also -.B luit(1) -.B charsets(7) -.B iso_8859-1(7) +.BR luit (1) +.BR charsets (7) +.BR iso_8859-1 (7) and -.B iso_8859-15(7) +.BR iso_8859-15 (7) for more information. .SS LOCALE @@ -486,30 +451,27 @@ Using the command .B "locale" will tell you what is currently in use. Using .B "locale -a" - will show you what's available. Then set your LANG evironmental variable to something appropriate by using one of these commands: - +.IP export LANG=C.UTF-8 export LANG=en_US.utf8 - +.P This can be put in your shell configuration file, be it .B .profile, .B .bash_profile, .B .login, .B .bashrc, -or whatever. - -It can also be set system-wide in the equivalent files in +or whatever. It can also be set system-wide in the equivalent files in .B /etc. .SS SEE ALSO -.B ash(1) -.B bash(1) -.B csh(1) -.B ksh(1) -.B sh(1) -.B zsh(1) +.BR ash (1) +.BR bash (1) +.BR csh (1) +.BR ksh (1) +.BR sh (1) +.BR zsh (1) .SH Z-MACHINE STANDARDS .B Frotz @@ -530,30 +492,26 @@ restricts such files to having an ".aux" filename extension. When the mechanism are restricted to the provided path the same as all other file accesses. - .SH ENVIRONMENT Unlike it's curses-using or SDL-using siblings, .B dfrotz does not search any path for game files. - .SH FURTHER INFORMATION .PP The Frotz homepage is at https://661.org/proj/if/frotz/. .PP A -.BR git(1) -repository of all versions of Unix Frotz back to 2.32 is available -for public perusal here: +.BR git (1) +repository of all versions of Unix Frotz from 2.32 to the bleeding edge +is available for public perusal at .br -https://gitlab.com/DavidGriffith/frotz/. +.B https://gitlab.com/DavidGriffith/frotz/. .PP -The bleeding edge of Frotz development may be followed there. -.PP -Source tarballs are available at the IF Archive or any of its many -mirrors: -.br -http://www.ifarchive.org/ +The Interactive Fiction Archive, at +.BR https://www.ifarchive.org/ , +is a good place to find games to play with Frotz. Various ports and +builds for Frotz may also be found there. .PP Most distributions of Linux and BSD include .B Frotz @@ -570,9 +528,7 @@ find a bug or would like to do something it doesn't currently do, please visit the above Gitlab website and report your concerns. - .SH CAVEATS -.PP The Z Machine itself has trouble with the concept of resizing a terminal. It assumes that once the text height and width are set, they will never change; even across saves. This made sense when 24x80 terminals were the @@ -581,12 +537,11 @@ there's a way around this problem, but for now, don't resize an xterm in which frotz is running. Also, you should try to make sure the terminal on which you restore a saved game has the same dimensions as the one on which you saved the game. - -.PP +.P This manpage is not intended to tell users HOW to play interactive fiction. Refer to the file HOW_TO_PLAY included in the Unix Frotz documentation or visit one of the following sites: -.br +.IP http://www.microheaven.com/ifguide/ .br http://www.brasslantern.org/beginners/ @@ -595,13 +550,10 @@ http://www.musicwords.net/if/how_to_play.htm .br http://ifarchive.org/ - .SH BUGS This program has no bugs. no bugs. no bugs. no *WHAP* thank you. If you find one, please report it to the Gitlab site referenced above in -.B -FURTHER INFORMATION. - +.B FURTHER INFORMATION. .SH AUTHORS .B Frotz @@ -611,8 +563,7 @@ The Unix port was done by Galen Hazelwood. .br The Unix port is currently maintained by David Griffith . - -.SH "SEE ALSO" +.SH SEE ALSO .BR frotz (6) .BR sfrotz (6) .BR nitfol (6)