Name
xzip - X Interface to the Z-code Interpreter
Syntax
xzip [ options ... ] gamefile
The list of options is described below. The gamefile should be the
filename of a Z-code file or a PICKLE archive containing a Z-code file.
Description
xzip is a clean X Windows interface to games written in Infocom’s Z-
code game format. It handles Z-code versions 1 through 5, plus the
newer version 8.
The interface is heavily (well, completely) based on ATK, an X toolkit
developed at CMU. Really, I would have preferred to actually do this in
ATK... except that then you’d need ATK to run it, and that’s 50
megabytes of source code. (Honest.) So I just did an imitation.
Mouse Commands
In the text window:
Left-click to move the dot to the mouse location.
Click-and-drag to select a large region.
Right-click to extend the selection to the mouse location.
Double-clicking selects a word (or extends the selection one word at a
time).
In the scroll bar:
Left-click on the arrows to scroll to the top or bottom.
Right-click on the arrows to scroll up or down one line.
Click-and-drag on the elevator will scroll up and down smoothly.
Left-click in the bar (without dragging) will scroll down by an amount
controlled by where in the bar you click. The farther down the bar, the
more it scrolls. This is computed so that if you left-click next to a
line, that line scrolls to the top of the screen.
Right-click in the bar (without dragging) will scroll up in a similar
manner. The top line will scroll down to where you clicked.
Key Commands
The key commands will be familiar to Emacs users. meta- combinations
can be used either by holding down the meta key (possibly labelled alt
or something else) or by pressing escape before the desired key.
The commands listed below are the defaults. They can be customized with
the bindings X resource (see below.) <none> indicates a function which
by default is not bound to any key.
ctrl-f (forward-char) Move dot forward one character.
ctrl-b (backward-char) Move dot backward one character.
meta-f (forward-word) Move dot forward one word.
meta-b (backward-word) Move dot backward one word.
ctrl-a (beginning-of-line) Move dot to beginning of line.
ctrl-e (end-of-line) Move dot to end of line.
PageDown, ctrl-v (scroll-down) Scroll down one page.
PageUp, meta-v (scroll-up) Scroll up one page.
delete (delete-char) Delete character before the dot.
ctrl-d (delete-next-char) Delete character after the dot.
meta-delete (delete-word) Delete word before the dot.
meta-d (delete-next-word) Delete word after the dot.
ctrl-w (kill-region) Cut selection to cut buffer.
meta-w (copy-region) Copy selection to cut buffer.
ctrl-y (yank) Copy the cut buffer in at the dot.
ctrl-k (kill-line) Cut from dot to end of line into the cut buffer.
ctrl-u (kill-input) Cut all text typed so far into the cut buffer.
UpArrow, meta-= (backward-history) Move back one line in command
history buffer.
DownArrow, meta-‘ (forward-history) Move back one line in command
history buffer.
meta-0...meta-9 (macro) Insert a macro string at the dot. By default,
all macros are undefined at startup, but you can change this with the
bindings option.
meta-r (define-macro) The next macro key hit will be redefined to be
the selection. If there is no selection, or if the next key hit is not
a macro key, an error is displayed.
ctrl-l (redraw-all-windows) Redraw text and status windows.
<none> (redraw-status) Redraw status window.
<none> (redraw-screen) Redraw text window.
meta-z (zoom-status) Expand status window to maximum size (only when
the autoresize option is on.)
meta-s (shrink-status) Shrink status window to minimum size (only when
the autoresize option is on.)
meta-c (clear-status) Clear any extra text below the status line in the
status window.
Enter, Return (enter) Accept the text that has been typed.
Escape (escape) Set escape mode; next key hit will be taken as a meta
key.
ctrl-g (cancel) Cancel escape mode, and anything else that’s going on.
Help, ctrl-_ (explain-key) Explain the next key hit; this displays the
function that the key is bound to, and its argument, if any.
All normal keys (insert-self) Insert whatever key is bound to this at
the dot.
<none> (no-op) Do nothing. Bind a key to this to disable it.
Resources and Options
All the behavior of xzip is controlled by X resources and command-line
options. Any particular behavior can be set with either a resource or
an option; options override resources.
Command-line options go on the command line, looking like,
xzip -option value gamefile
Note that even binary options like "justify" must be given a value,
"yes" or "no".
Resources are usually placed in your .Xdefaults or Xresources file,
depending on your system setup. They have the format
xzip.resourcename: value
These are the resources and options that you can currently set. The
default values are in italics.
geometry: 500x600+100+100
The geometry of the text window, in the usual X geometry format.
statgeometry: 80x24+100+50
The geometry of the status window. Note that the size is given
in characters, not in pixels, although the position is still in
pixels. This makes it something of a pain to position it in the
right or bottom sides of the screen.
foreground: black
The color of the text and other window decorations.
background: white
The color of the window background.
greycolor: grey60
An intermediate color, used for the scroll bar on color
displays.
justify: yes
If "yes", full-justify the text in the text window.
marginx: 4
Width (in pixels) of the margin between the left edge of the
text and the scroll bar.
leading: 3
Width (in pixels) of extra space to put between lines of text.
autoresize: yes
If "yes", the status window will automatically resize to be just
big enough for the game’s status line. (But see "Quirks",
below.)
resizeupward: no
If "no", the status window will resize downward; the top edge
will stay in place, and the bottom edge will move. If "yes", it
will resize upward. At the moment, this doesn’t work very well
at all. (See "Known Bugs", below.)
autoclear: yes
If "yes", extraneous text in the status window will be cleared
after one turn. (See "Quirks", below.)
history: 20
The number of commands to store in the command history.
buffer: 4000
The amount of text (in characters) to keep in the scrollback
buffer. If this is made too large, the program can become very
slow.
strictz: 1
The level of reporting of various subtle errors in the game
file. 0 means that all errors are silently ignored; 1 (the
default) means that each error is reported, but only the first
time it occurs; 2 means that each error is reported every time
it occurs; 3 means that the interpreter will shut down
immediately when an error occurs.
spec: no
If "yes", the interpreter will declare itself to be compliant
with the Z-machine Specification version 1.0. This is,
basically, a lie, since I have not formally reviewed the source
for Spec-1.0 compliance. However, xzip does support every
Spec-1.0 feature that I know of, except for the color and
Unicode options.
inputstyle: b
The style to display your typed input in. This can be n for
normal text, or r, b, rb, i, ri, bi, rbi, f, rf, bf, rbf, if,
rif, bif, rbif to specify any combination of Reverse, Bold,
Italic, and Fixed. Note that the letters must be in the order
shown; you cannot use ib to specify italic and bold.
X-color: (same as foreground)
X may be any of n, r, b, rb, i, ri, bi, rbi, f, rf, bf, rbf, if,
rif, bif, rbif. This allows you to specify the color of any of
the sixteen fonts used by xzip. For non-reversed fonts, this is
the color of the text; for reversed fonts, it is the color of
the field on which the text is displayed. (The text of reversed
fonts is always in the background color.)
X-font:
X may be any of n, b, i, bi, f, bf, if, bif. This allows you to
specify the sixteen fonts used by xzip. (Note that you cannot
set the reversed fonts; they always use the same font as their
non-reversed counterparts.)
The status window always uses the fixed-width fonts; the text
window usually (but not always) uses proportional fonts.
bindings: (see above)
Key bindings to supplement or override the default bindings. The
resource should look like
key=function [, argument ]; key=function [, argument ] ...
where key is the name of a key, preceded by c- to indicate a
control key and m- to indicate a meta key. function should be
one of the function names listed in parentheses in the "Key
Bindings" section. argument (which is optional) should be a
quoted string which will be passed to the function. Currently,
only the macro function takes an argument.
So, for example,
xzip.bindings: c-x=kill-input; m-i=macro,"inventory"; m-d=no-op
would mean that ctrl-x will delete all input, and meta-i will
enter the string "inventory", and meta-d will do nothing. You
can have more than one key bound to a function, but you can only
have one function bound to a key; later bindings will override
earlier ones.
Ok, I lied; there’s one behavior which is set by an environment
variable. If you set INFOCOM_PATH to a directory or colon-separated
list of directories, xzip will look there for a story file if it
doesn’t find it in the current directory.
Quirks
As always, if you highlight colored text, the result may be surprising.
Highlighting "normal" text will be fine, and any other fonts which are
the same color, but other colors may highlight in strange ways, and
could be hard to read. (This is only a problem for text which is
highlighted because it’s selected. Text in a reverse font looks
correct.)
Certain games (notably Trinity and Curses! ) display pop-up windows,
by using the status line in a slightly funky way. They expand the
status line, display some text, and then immediately shrink the status
line again.
I have done my best to support this in xzip ´s two-window system. The
pop-up window will be visible from when it is created until the first
time you hit Return. Then the status window will shrink again. This
gives you one "turn" to read the pop-up, which should be sufficient.
(In one-window, non-scrolling interpreters, the pop-up appears over
your old text, and scrolls away as you continue play.)
If you turn off the autoclear option, pop-ups will not be erased; use
meta-z to expand the status window and read them after the window
shrinks, and meta-c to erase them manually. If you do not erase the
pop-up, a later pop-up may partially overwrite it, which looks ugly.
If you turn off the autoshrink option, the status window will not
shrink, but the pop-up will still be erased (unless you have turned off
autoclear as well.)
Known Bugs
The "resizeupward" preference just plain doesn’t work. If you use it,
the status window will slowly drift downwards as it resizes.
If a timed input (such as Border Zone uses) expires while you are
editing a line, the dot jumps to the end of the line.
If a style change occurs in the middle of a word, xzip thinks it’s okay
to break the word there (when wrapping lines.)
Reverse text has gaps in it in full-justified lines. It also has gaps
between lines, in the text window.
The keybindings are ignored while xzip is waiting for a single
keystroke (as opposed to a line of input.) ctrl-l is hardwired to
work, but any other key will just be taken literally.
Scrolling is slow and awful on X servers without backing store.
Ignores meta modifier on special keyboard keys (Home, PageUp, etc)
Parsing of keys in bindings could be cleverer. It ought to understand
/123 octal notation at least.
Ought to have separate font and color prefs for the status window.
Sometimes makes you place a window by hand, even though the geometry is
specified.
Author
X interface by Andrew Plotkin (erkyrath@eblong.com)
The Z-code engine is taken from ZIP V2.0.7 by Mark Howell
(howell_ma@movies.enet.dec.com)
For more information, see the web page:
http://www.eblong.com/zarf/xzip.html
You are expressly forbidden to use this program on an Infocom game data
file if, in so doing, you violate the copyright notice supplied with
the original Infocom game.
Parts of this program (the files xinit.c, xio.c, xkey.c, xmess.c,
xstat.c, xtext.c) are copyrighted by Andrew Plotkin. These files may be
distributed, modified, and used freely, with the exception noted above.
I do not know the exact copyright status of the rest, except that it
was written by Mark Howell and thus is probably copyrighted by him. He
released it for free, so to the best of my knowledge, it can also be
distributed, modified, and used freely, with the exception noted above.
xzip(1)