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Start of Chapter 24: Testing and Debugging |
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Back to §24.6. Testing for thoroughness |
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Onward to §24.8. Help from the user community |
Inform 7 Home Page / Documentation
§24.7. Commands for beta-testers
Inform includes a command that is especially designed to help beta-testers report flaws: namely, TRANSCRIPT. A tester can type TRANSCRIPT (or just SCRIPT) at the beginning of the story in order to start generating a recording of everything that happens. She can then add her own annotations when something buggy or otherwise notable occurs (for instance by typing a standard symbol, such as *, followed by a note).
When she then sends us the completed transcript, we can look through for these symbols and note the problems the tester found in the context of the rest of the story's behavior. Having information about how she reached that position typically makes it much easier to reproduce the problem than if she gave only a general account of it.