resources

Library Resources

This folder contains some useful assets for developers wishing to port the Foundation Library to a new locale, or authors wishing to tailor their adventures to their own needs.

Library Templates

Runtime Messages

• messages_en.i — English messages template.
• messages_sv.i — Swedish messages template.
• messages_de.i — German messages template.

The templates contain all the built-in ALAN runtime messages with their default definitions for the English, Swedish or German locale.

A template is going to be very useful if you need to translate the Foundation Library to a new locale, since you'll need to override every default MESSAGE with the appropriate translation. In this case, you might want to copy the whole file into your Foundation folder, as a module of the library, and adapt it to needs.

IMPORTANT — Some library modules already redefine a few MESSAGEs; so you'll need to keep an eye for duplicate definitions, in case you decide to integrate one of these templates.

You can also a template as a reference to customize the text of specific responses; in this case you'll probably use it to copy a few messages and paste them in your adventure code.

For a detailed explanation of each MESSAGE usage context, and its parameters, see Appendix C.1 of The ALAN Manual.

Remember that MESSAGE definitions are not limited to simple strings. You can provide dynamic messages by including actual code in their definitions, as described in §3.15 of The ALAN Manual.

TIP — You can find the default MESSAGE definitions in the compiler/msg.c file of the ALAN source code. The first comment line in the messages_??.i templates contains the date and commit hash of the compiler/msg.c revision against which those strings were last compared:

-- "messages_en.i" | 2021/08/17 | 6d7ede7f37e97d63c8db5a3d2a1374 | ALAN 3.0beta7

---

Reference Links

• The ALAN Manual:
  • §3.15. MESSAGEs
  • App. C.1. Input Response Messages