Preliminaries

• What This Module Does - An overview of the if module's role and abilities.

Chapter 1: Starting Up

• IF Module - Setting up the use of this module.

Chapter 2: Bibliographic Data

ISBN-like data and cataloguing information, and Release... sentences.

• Bibliographic Data - To manage the special variables providing bibliographic data on the work of IF being generated (title, author's name and so forth), and to write the Library Card in the index.

• Release Instructions - To write the iFiction record for the work of IF compiled, its release instructions and its picture manifest, if any.

• The iFiction Record - To write the iFiction record for the work of IF compiled.

• The Blurb File - To write the blurb file of instructions for inblorb to release the project.

Chapter 3: Space and Time

A simulated world of geography, spatial containment and scenes.

• Spatial Model - A feature which constructs the fundamental spatial model used by IF, to represent containment, support, carrying, wearing, and incorporation.

• Everywhere, Nowhere and Here - To define the unary predicates for some anaphoric location adjectives.

• Spatial Relations - Binary predicates for spatial relationships.

• Spatial Inferences - Six families of inference used by the spatial feature.

• Persons - A feature marking instances of person as being "animate".

• The Player - A feature to give a special role to a person who is the protagonist.

• Devices - A feature giving minimal support for switchable devices.

• Backdrops - A feature to provide support for backdrop objects, which are present as scenery in multiple rooms at once.

• Regions - A feature providing support for grouping rooms together into named and nestable regions.

• The Map - A feature to provide a geographical model, linking rooms and doors together in oppositely-paired directions.

• Map Connection Relations - To define one binary predicate for each map direction, such as "mapped north of".

• Timed Rules - A feature to support rules like "At 12:03AM: ...".

• Scenes - A feature to support named periods of time during an interactive story.

• The Score - A feature to support the score variables.

• Mapping Hint Requests - Special sentences giving layout or design hints on how to produce the World map in the index and an EPS map.

Chapter 4: Actions

Actions are impulses to do something within the simulated world.

• Actions Plugin - A feature for actions, by which animate characters change the world model.

• Actions-Only Nodes and Annotations - Additional syntax tree node and annotation types used by the actions feature.

• Action Kinds - Three action-related kinds of value.

• Action Conditions - A special condition for testing against action patterns.

• Actions - Each different sort of impulse to do something is an "action name".

• Action Semantics - Constraints on how actions may be used in the model world.

• Action Variables - Variables shared by the rules of the rulebooks processing an action.

• Action Name Names - There is an annoying profusion of ways an action can have a name.

• Action Patterns - An action pattern is a description which may match many actions or none. The text "doing something" matches every action, while "throwing something at a door in a dark room" is seldom matched.

• Action Name Lists - Action name lists are used in parsing action patterns, and identify which action names seem to be possible within them.

• Action Pattern Clauses - Pattern-matches on individual nouns in an action are called clauses.

• Parse Action Patterns - Turning text into APs.

• Parse Clauses - Parsing the clauses part of an AP from source text.

• Explicit Actions - An exactly specified action is called "explicit".

• Named Action Patterns - A named action pattern is a categorisation of behaviour.

• Going - A feature to provide a little extra support for the "going" action.

• Rules Predicated on Actions - Rules can be set to run only if the action matches a given pattern.

Chapter 5: Command Parser

Understand... sentences become a grammar for the command parser to use at run-time.

• Parsing Plugin - A feature for command-parser support.

• Understand Sentences - Command parser grammar is laid out in special Understand... sentences.

• Command Grammars - The possible command text following a command verb, or referring to a single concept or object, is gathered into a "command grammar".

• Command Grammar Lines - A CG line is a list of CG tokens to specify a textual pattern. For example, "take [something] out" is a CG line of three tokens.

• Command Grammar Tokens - CGs are list of CG lines, which are lists of CG tokens.

• Determination Types - Command grammars, their lines and their tokens may each "determine" up to two values, and here we provide a way to describe the range of those.

• Property Visibility - Some properties can be referred to in the player's commands.

• Test Scripts - A rudimentary but useful testing system for runnign short sequences of commands through the command parser at runtime.

Chapter 6: Dialogue

• Dialogue - A nascent system for managing conversation.

• Dialogue Beats - To manage dialogue beats and to parse their cue paragraphs.

• Dialogue Lines - To manage dialogue lines.

• Dialogue Choices - To manage dialogue choices.

• Dialogue Nodes - The structure of a dialogue beat as a tree of nodes, each of which can be either a line or a choice.

• Dialogue Relations - Binary predicates for spatial relationships.

• Performance Styles - Manners of speaking, used in dialogue.