Under consideration These suggestions were accepted and are incorporated in the current Inform release. Anybody is welcome to submit a suggestion; please keep it succinct and in the style of the proposals already published here.
About Suggestions
Accepted for next release
Incorporated in current release
Rejected
Complete list
Suggestions already incorporated
66. Reverse Strict mode's dependency on Debug mode, so that a game can have Strict's run-time checks without Debug's extra commands.
63. In v6 games, SaveSub( ) should set the header bit requesting a screen update (since after the restore the v6 screen model will need to be reinitialized). Conversely, the default DrawStatusLine( ) method should probably clear this after it reinits the screen.
60. Allow multiple UNDO.
58. It should be possible to define a constant early to suppress the SCORE and FULL verbs and all score reporting, so that people don't have to hack this for puzzleless or otherwise score-free games. (As Zarf has pointed out, it's very easy to remove SCORE incorrectly.)
57. The move towards a single Z-Machine/Glulx compiler increases the requirement for compiler options settable within the source file rather than on the command line. Currently, Switches G; seems to crash the compiler, while statements like +include_path= and $MAX_STATIC_DATA= are unsupported.
54. Remove the 'wall' concept of compass directions, renaming them "the direction north", or "the northerly view", or simply "north" as in the Inform FAQ entry.
53. Add a mechanism to extend the -Cx input character set argument so that other character sets for source code can be read from a file, so that Inform can compile from (say) Windows-Cyrillic sources.
52. Add a mechanism to specify extra values in the header extension table.
50. Ensure all Z-Spec 1.0 opcodes are included in the assembler.
46. Make task_scores a word array -- the extra bytes are trivial, compared with the benefits of large and negative scores.
37. I notice that printing rules are available for both the capitalized and lowercase versions of the definite article, (The) and (the), but only a lowercase version is present for the indefinite article, (a). There is no (A), as I discovered when I found myself needing one. I think this inconsistancy should be fixed.
35. Defining Verb 'pry' 'prise' 'prize' 'lever' * noun 'with' held -> Unlock in the standard library. I promise I will shut up about this when I play a game that allows 'pry' but also 'prise'.
33. Compiler warning/error if non-dictionary words are included in name property. (see also suggestion 1)
31. Making "ASK|TELL X TO Y" a (near) synonym for "X, Y"
29. Compiler warning or error when using unqualified properties within routines (e.g. a C programmer forgot to include "self.").
27. For the twelve compass directions: either make the numbers assigned to XXX_obj and XXX_to consistent throughout or make them completely distinct; the current half-and-half situation promotes confusion.
26. Give selfobj an empty add_to_scope property, so that it's easy to extend by player.add_to_scope=myScopeRoutine; without needing to create a whole new player object.
25. Define LIBRARY_PARSER, LIBRARY_VERBLIB and LIBRARY_GRAMMAR constants in library files so that contributed packages can check their own correct inclusion; also suggests a standard for general dependency checking.
15. Provide warnings when -> is used to reference arrays declared as word arrays/tables, and also when --> is used to reference byte arrays
11. Extended directive: Array name buffer, to create an array with a length word and character bytes, as used by print_to_array.
5. Provide some control over the implied TAKE which is built into verbs like EAT (as in EAT BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN).
3. Provide simple control over all "(providing light)" and "(which is open)" style annotations, in room descriptions as well as the inventory -- see this Inform FAQ entry.
2. Make RECORDING and REPLAY available even when Debug mode is switched off.
Last updated 2 May 2008. The librarian in charge of this page is Roger Firth. Please email any comments, suggestions or corrections to roger@firthworks.com.