22.9. Some technicalities about figures and sounds

| Chapter 22: Figures, Sounds and Files |

| 22.9. Some technicalities about figures and sounds

(i) Names for figures, such as "Figure of Woodlands", are values for a special kind of value called "figure name". This can in turn be used to define variables, properties and phrases:

> The turn card image is a figure name that varies.

> An Old Master is a kind of thing. An Old Master has a figure name called appearance. Figure 1 is the file "Giaconda.jpg". The Mona Lisa is an Old Master. The appearance of the Mona Lisa is Figure 1.

> To place (F - a figure name) in the gallery: ...

(ii) Similarly, names for sound effects, such as "Sound of rustling leaves", are values for the kind of value "sound name".

(iii) In the released, blorbed-up Glulx file, figures and sound effects are internally given resource ID numbers which count upwards from 2 in order of their declaration. (Figure and sound numbers can thus be intermingled, if their declarations are.) Resource ID number 1 is reserved for the image of the cover art, if there is any. (See the chapter on Publishing.) To obtain these numbers, if we need them, we can use:

Glulx resource ID of (figure name) ... number

This phrase produces the ID number used in the eventual Glulx file for the given figure.

Glulx resource ID of (sound name) ... number

This phrase produces the ID number used in the eventual Glulx file for the given sound effect.

(iv) Glulx hackers may also like to know that whenever Inform 7 builds a project for Glulx, the Inform 6 code it generates always contains a full copy of John Cater's definitive header file "infglk.h".

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