5.12. Displaying quotations

| Chapter 5: Text |

| 5.12. Displaying quotations

Text is normally printed in between the typed commands of the player, rolling upwards from the bottom of the screen, as if a dialogue is being typed by an old-fashioned teletype. But it can also be displayed in a bolder way, floating above the main text, and this is sometimes used to display quotations.

display the boxed quotation (text)

This phrase displays the given text on screen in an overlaid box. For reasons to do with the way such quotations are plotted onto the screen, their text is treated literally: no substitutions in square brackets are obeyed. The quotation will only ever appear once, regardless of the number of times the "display the boxed quotation ..." phrase is reached. Rather than being shown immediately - and thus, probably, scrolling away before it can be seen - the display is held back until the next command prompt is shown to the player. Example: After looking in the Wabe, display the boxed quotation "And 'the wabe' is the grass-plot round a sun-dial, I suppose? said Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity. Of course it is. It's called 'wabe,' you know, because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it -- -- Lewis Carroll". This was the original example used in Trinity, by Brian Moriarty, which invented the idea. A player exploring Kensington Gardens comes upon a location enigmatically called The Wabe; and by way of explanation, this quotation pops up.

This is a simple feature, and we should go in search of a suitable extension for fancier screen effects if we would like to do more.

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