As it stands, this is a very short source text. Typical large Inform projects, though, run to 80,000 words or more - the length of a modern novel - and then it is not so easy to take in the situation at a glance.Inform generates and updates an Index to every project, offering a variety of perspectives on the narrative.
Here we see a geographical index: there are two rooms, arranged with one east of the other, and at the start of play there's a man in each: Robert carries his manuscript, Thomas wears suitably 18th-century accoutrements.
Again, the orange discs jump to the relevant point in the source text - the places where these people and items were first described. The blue disc with the question mark is a reference to the Inform documentation: clicking on it switches the opposite panel to show the relevant manual page, in this case the one explaining how to change the room where play begins.
Memoirs of India 8-9
Gallery
The Kinds index is not geographical, but taxonomic: it breaks down the simulated world according to the nature of things. As can be seen, the world is basically divided into what physically exists, like Robert or Longman's shop, and what exists only abstractly, like the number 14.The physical world is then divided further into rooms, things and so on, continuing until we have enough detail for the work we are currently writing. For instance, in a game about a man trying to publish a book, we probably don't need to have different kinds of animal (zebra, elephant, tiger and so on), though we could easily create these if we needed to.
The numbers in square brackets are the number of instances of each kind which exist: thus there are two rooms and five things. Clicking on the grey magnifying glass icons jumps to a detailed description of the kind in question, while once again the blue help icons link to the relevant pages in the manual - so clicking on the one next to "vehicle", for instance, switches the opposite panel to the Documentation, open at the page on vehicles.
