Welcome to Inform!
******************

Inform is an Interactive Fiction (text adventure) game compiler -- it takes
source code you write and turns it into a game data file which is then
played using an 'interpreter'.  There are several interpreters available
which can play Inform games on different machines (e.g. frotz, jzip) -- you
can probably obtain one from the same place you got this package.

Inform was originally written by Graham Nelson, and you are free to
redistribute it under certain conditions -- see the file COPYING for
details.

What's in this distribution?
============================

The following subdirectories are included in the package:

    src		source code for the Inform program 
    lib		Inform library files
    include	selection of useful include files
    manual	the online Designer's Manual, in HTML format
    demos	some Inform demo games (including the classic 'advent')
    tutor	some Inform tutorial files
    docs	internal Inform documentation and release notes
    contrib	other contributed Inform stuff

How do I install it?
====================

See the file called INSTALL for detailed instructions.  But basically, it
boils down to...

    ./configure
    make
    make install

This will install the following (assuming default installation):

    Inform executable in /usr/local/bin
    Inform library modules in /usr/local/share/inform/VERSION/module
    Inform include files in /usr/local/share/inform/VERSION/include
    HTML Designer's Manual in /usr/local/share/inform/manual

OK, it's installed.  Now what?
==============================

Now you want to read the online Designer's Manual.  Or, alternatively, you
could start with one of the tutorials in the tutor directory.  After that,
you're all set to write an IF game!  Yay!

Troubleshooting
===============

If you have any problems with anything, contact the relevant person
listed in the AUTHORS file.  If you're not sure who that is, contact me
instead, at the address at the end of this file.

The Interactive Fiction archive
===============================

There's a good chance that you got this package from the IF archive, or one
of its mirrors.  But if you didn't, you might like to check it out:

    http://www.ifarchive.org

It has lots of great things: games, hints, solutions, authoring systems
(like this one), programs for playing the games, tools for making maps, and
stuff about the late, great Infocom.

There are also more resources for programming with Inform, including a
version of the Inform Designer's Manual suitable for printing.  See the
stuff in the programming/inform6 subdirectory.

The Inform maintainers
======================

An active community of Inform maintainers exists to fix bugs, implement new
features and issue new versions of the program.  If you'd like to know
more, or you think you've found a bug, visit them at:

    http://www.inform-fiction.org

About this package
==================

In my tinkerings with Inform over the years (I really *will* write a proper
game one day), I've had to move the program, libraries and documentation to
several different Unix machines.  Although it wasn't a big problem, it was
just tedious enough to make me want to automate the configuration and
installation process, and have everything I needed automatically to hand.
The result is this package, which should build and install on all Unix,
Linux and Win32/Cygwin systems.

Then I thought, hey, maybe other people find it a bit tedious too.  So I
asked Graham for his permission to redistribute Inform, and he gave it.
Hope it proves useful.

Many people contributed to the contents of this package.  See the file
AUTHORS for more details.

Finally...
==========

If you have any comments or suggestions (or anything else, for that matter)
feel free to drop me a line.  I am:

Glenn Hutchings <zondo@pillock.freeserve.co.uk>.
