xzip(1)
Name
xzip - X Interface to the Z-code Interpreter
Syntax
xzip [ options ... ] gamefile
The list of options is described below. The gamefile
should be the filename of a Z-code file or a PICKLE
archive containing a Z-code file.
Description
is a clean X Windows interface to games written in Info-
com's Z-code game format. It handles Z-code versions 1
through 5, plus the newer version 8.
The interface is heavily (well, completely) based on ATK,
an X toolkit developed at CMU. Really, I would have pre-
ferred to actually do this in ATK... except that then
you'd need ATK to run it, and that's 50 megabytes of
source code. (Honest.) So I just did an imitation.
Mouse Commands
In the text window:
Left-click to move the dot to the mouse location.
Click-and-drag to select a large region.
Right-click to extend the selection to the mouse location.
Double-clicking selects a word (or extends the selection
one word at a time).
In the scroll bar:
Left-click on the arrows to scroll to the top or bottom.
Right-click on the arrows to scroll up or down one line.
Click-and-drag on the elevator will scroll up and down
smoothly.
Left-click in the bar (without dragging) will scroll down
by an amount controlled by where in the bar you click. The
farther down the bar, the more it scrolls. This is com-
puted so that if you left-click next to a line, that line
scrolls to the top of the screen.
Right-click in the bar (without dragging) will scroll up
in a similar manner. The top line will scroll down to
where you clicked.
Key Commands
The key commands will be familiar to Emacs users. meta-
combinations can be used either by holding down the meta
key (possibly labelled alt or something else) or by press-
ing escape before the desired key.
The commands listed below are the defaults. They can be
customized with the bindings X resource (see below.)
<none> indicates a function which by default is not bound
to any key.
ctrl-f (forward-char) Move dot forward one character.
ctrl-b (backward-char) Move dot backward one character.
meta-f (forward-word) Move dot forward one word.
meta-b (backward-word) Move dot backward one word.
ctrl-a (beginning-of-line) Move dot to beginning of line.
ctrl-e (end-of-line) Move dot to end of line.
PageDown, ctrl-v (scroll-down) Scroll down one page.
PageUp, meta-v (scroll-up) Scroll up one page.
delete (delete-char) Delete character before the dot.
ctrl-d (delete-next-char) Delete character after the dot.
meta-delete (delete-word) Delete word before the dot.
meta-d (delete-next-word) Delete word after the dot.
ctrl-w (kill-region) Cut selection to cut buffer.
meta-w (copy-region) Copy selection to cut buffer.
ctrl-y (yank) Copy the cut buffer in at the dot.
ctrl-k (kill-line) Cut from dot to end of line into the
cut buffer.
ctrl-u (kill-input) Cut all text typed so far into the cut
buffer.
UpArrow, meta-= (backward-history) Move back one line in
command history buffer.
DownArrow, meta-` (forward-history) Move back one line in
command history buffer.
meta-0...meta-9 (macro) Insert a macro string at the dot.
By default, all macros are undefined at startup, but you
can change this with the bindings option.
meta-r (define-macro) The next macro key hit will be rede-
fined to be the selection. If there is no selection, or if
the next key hit is not a macro key, an error is dis-
played.
ctrl-l (redraw-all-windows) Redraw text and status win-
dows.
<none> (redraw-status) Redraw status window.
<none> (redraw-screen) Redraw text window.
meta-z (zoom-status) Expand status window to maximum size
(only when the autoresize option is on.)
meta-s (shrink-status) Shrink status window to minimum
size (only when the autoresize option is on.)
meta-c (clear-status) Clear any extra text below the sta-
tus line in the status window.
Enter, Return (enter) Accept the text that has been typed.
Escape (escape) Set escape mode; next key hit will be
taken as a meta key.
ctrl-g (cancel) Cancel escape mode, and anything else
that's going on.
Help, ctrl-_ (explain-key) Explain the next key hit; this
displays the function that the key is bound to, and its
argument, if any.
All normal keys (insert-self) Insert whatever key is bound
to this at the dot.
<none> (no-op) Do nothing. Bind a key to this to disable
it.
Resources and Options
All the behavior of is controlled by X resources and com-
mand-line options. Any particular behavior can be set with
either a resource or an option; options override
resources.
Command-line options go on the command line, looking like,
xzip -option value gamefile
Note that even binary options like "justify" must be given
a value, "yes" or "no".
Resources are usually placed in your .Xdefaults or Xre-
sources file, depending on your system setup. They have
the format
xzip.resourcename: value
These are the resources and options that you can currently
set. The default values are in italics.
geometry: 500x600+100+100
The geometry of the text window, in the usual X
geometry format.
statgeometry: 80x24+100+50
The geometry of the status window. Note that the
size is given in characters, not in pixels,
although the position is still in pixels. This
makes it something of a pain to position it in the
right or bottom sides of the screen.
foreground: black
The color of the text and other window decorations.
background: white
The color of the window background.
greycolor: grey60
An intermediate color, used for the scroll bar on
color displays.
justify: yes
If "yes", full-justify the text in the text window.
marginx: 4
Width (in pixels) of the margin between the left
edge of the text and the scroll bar.
leading: 3
Width (in pixels) of extra space to put between
lines of text.
autoresize: yes
If "yes", the status window will automatically
resize to be just big enough for the game's status
line. (But see "Quirks", below.)
resizeupward: no
If "no", the status window will resize downward;
the top edge will stay in place, and the bottom
edge will move. If "yes", it will resize upward. At
the moment, this doesn't work very well at all.
(See "Known Bugs", below.)
autoclear: yes
If "yes", extraneous text in the status window will
be cleared after one turn. (See "Quirks", below.)
history: 20
The number of commands to store in the command his-
tory.
buffer: 4000
The amount of text (in characters) to keep in the
scrollback buffer. If this is made too large, the
program can become very slow.
inputstyle: b
The style to display your typed input in. This can
be n for normal text, or r, b, rb, i, ri, bi, rbi,
f, rf, bf, rbf, if, rif, bif, rbif to specify any
combination of Reverse, Bold, Italic, and Fixed.
Note that the letters must be in the order shown;
you cannot use ib to specify italic and bold.
X-color: (same as foreground)
X may be any of n, r, b, rb, i, ri, bi, rbi, f, rf,
bf, rbf, if, rif, bif, rbif. This allows you to
specify the color of any of the sixteen fonts used
by For non-reversed fonts, this is the color of the
text; for reversed fonts, it is the color of the
field on which the text is displayed. (The text of
reversed fonts is always in the background color.)
X-font:
X may be any of n, b, i, bi, f, bf, if, bif. This
allows you to specify the sixteen fonts used by
(Note that you cannot set the reversed fonts; they
always use the same font as their non-reversed
counterparts.)
The status window always uses the fixed-width
fonts; the text window usually (but not always)
uses proportional fonts.
bindings: (see above)
Key bindings to supplement or override the default
bindings. The resource should look like
key=function [, argument ]; key=function [, argu-
ment ] ...
where key is the name of a key, preceded by c- to
indicate a control key and m- to indicate a meta
key. function should be one of the function names
listed in parentheses in the "Key Bindings" sec-
tion. argument (which is optional) should be a
quoted string which will be passed to the function.
Currently, only the macro function takes an argu-
ment.
So, for example,
xzip.bindings: c-x=kill-input; m-i=macro,"inven-
tory"; m-d=no-op
would mean that ctrl-x will delete all input, and
meta-i will enter the string "inventory", and meta-
d will do nothing. You can have more than one key
bound to a function, but you can only have one
function bound to a key; later bindings will over-
ride earlier ones.
Ok, I lied; there's one behavior which is set by an envi-
ronment variable. If you set INFOCOM_PATH to a directory
or colon-separated list of directories, will look there
for a story file if it doesn't find it in the current
directory.
Quirks
As always, if you highlight colored text, the result may
be surprising. Highlighting "normal" text will be fine,
and any other fonts which are the same color, but other
colors may highlight in strange ways, and could be hard to
read. (This is only a problem for text which is high-
lighted because it's selected. Text in a reverse font
looks correct.)
Certain games (notably and ) display pop-up windows, by
using the status line in a slightly funky way. They expand
the status line, display some text, and then immediately
shrink the status line again.
I have done my best to support this in 's two-window sys-
tem. The pop-up window will be visible from when it is
created until the first time you hit Return. Then the
status window will shrink again. This gives you one "turn"
to read the pop-up, which should be sufficient. (In one-
window, non-scrolling interpreters, the pop-up appears
over your old text, and scrolls away as you continue
play.)
If you turn off the autoclear option, pop-ups will not be
erased; use meta-z to expand the status window and read
them after the window shrinks, and meta-c to erase them
manually. If you do not erase the pop-up, a later pop-up
may partially overwrite it, which looks ugly.
If you turn off the autoshrink option, the status window
will not shrink, but the pop-up will still be erased
(unless you have turned off autoclear as well.)
Known Bugs
The "resizeupward" preference just plain doesn't work. If
you use it, the status window will slowly drift downwards
as it resizes.
If a timed input (such as uses) expires while you are
editing a line, the dot jumps to the end of the line.
If a style change occurs in the middle of a word, thinks
it's okay to break the word there (when wrapping lines.)
Reverse text has gaps in it in full-justified lines. It
also has gaps between lines, in the text window.
The keybindings are ignored while is waiting for a single
keystroke (as opposed to a line of input.) ctrl-l is
hardwired to work, but any other key will just be taken
literally.
Scrolling is slow and awful on X servers without backing
store.
Ignores meta modifier on special keyboard keys (Home,
PageUp, etc)
Parsing of keys in bindings could be cleverer. It ought to
understand /123 octal notation at least.
Ought to have separate font and color prefs for the status
window.
Sometimes makes you place a window by hand, even though
the geometry is specified.
Author
X interface by Andrew Plotkin erkyrath@netcom.com
The Z-code engine is taken from ZIP V2.0.7 by Mark Howell
howell_ma@movies.enet.dec.com
You are expressly forbidden to use this program on an
Infocom game data file if, in so doing, you violate the
copyright notice supplied with the original Infocom game.
Parts of this program (the files xinit.c, xio.c, xkey.c,
xmess.c, xstat.c, xtext.c) are copyrighted by Andrew
Plotkin. These files may be distributed, modified, and
used freely, with the exception noted above.
I do not know the exact copyright status of the rest,
except that it was written by Mark Howell and thus is
probably copyrighted by him. He released it for free, so
to the best of my knowledge, it can also be distributed,
modified, and used freely, with the exception noted above.