23.22. Titling and abbreviation

| Chapter 23: Releasing |

| 23.22. Titling and abbreviation

The main title of the map is the value of "title" for the whole map, so for instance we might write:

> Index map with title set to "Oxford and its Environs".

The subtitle settings apply to the subtitles used for each of the levels, so for instance

> Index map with subtitle of level -1 set to "Tunnels and Sewers".

Names of individual rooms can be controlled with:

> Index map with name of Radcliffe Camera set to "Library".

(By default, the name of a room is its name in the main IF project, of course.) The smallest writing on the map is normally that used to label unorthodox or unclear exits (in particular, those going from one layer to another): this is what the "annotation" size, font and colour are used for.

For most ways to set up the map, it's a practical necessity to abbreviate names of rooms, or they will spill out all over each other. Inform does this using the "room-name-length" setting. (The "annotation-name-length" is analogous.) For instance, if this setting is 5, then Inform will reduce the text of a name to at most 5 characters. It does this by successively throwing out spaces, lower case vowels, then other lower case letters, punctuation marks and finally upper case letters, always starting at the back of the name and working inwards: the process stops as soon as the name is short enough. For instance, "Reading" is abbreviated to "Redng", "Shangri-La" to "Shn-La" and "Cloud-Cuckoo-Land" to "C-C-L". The result can be a little comical, but is surprisingly unambiguous in practice. Abbreviation can effectively be abolished by raising the "room-name-length" to 128 (the highest permitted level), and note that the setting can be changed for individual rooms, so it is possible to have some room names abbreviated and others not, or in different degrees.

435
| Example Port Royal 5 Port Royal scenario given instructions for an EPS map. |
RB

436
| Example Baedeker Creating a floorplan of the cathedral using the locations from previous examples. |
RB

437
| Example Bay Leaves and Honey Wine Creating a map of Greece using the locations from previous examples. |
RB

The map-maker can be used in quite versatile ways, in short; though the default is a schematic line-and-box affair, that is hardly the only option. While the EPS created is not always the result of our dreams, Inform usually can be made to do most of the hard and boring part, leaving the author to do only a bit of aesthetic touchup. In many previous examples, we have sent hapless deities wandering around a map of Greece; we might like to chart that for ourselves, in a semi-realistic fashion. So: "Bay Leaves and Honey Wine" Corinth is a room. Athens is east of Corinth. Epidaurus is southeast of Corinth and east of Mycenae. Mycenae is south of Corinth. Olympia is west of Mycenae. Argos is south of Mycenae. Thebes is northwest of Athens. Pylos is south of Olympia. Sparta is east of Pylos and south of Argos. Delphi is northwest of Thebes. Index map with an EPS file and room-size set to 8, map-outline set to off, room-name-offset set to 40&-40, room-outline set to off, room-colour set to "White", route-colour set to "White", room-name-colour set to "White", room-name-length set to 25, room-shape set to "circle". This produces a line-and-dot map, where the names of rooms do not appear inside the city-circles, but rather (thanks to "room-name-offset") off to one side. We specify a long room-name-length because we want all the names of the cities spelled out in full; and we make all the elements white because we intend to place them over a black background layer. We can then superimpose this on a vector map of Greece and tweak the exact positions of cities a little by hand (in Adobe Illustrator, as it happens, but other programs would also allow this level of editing). The result:

Previous | Contents | Next