[Log started by Adam Mon Oct 18 09:15:24 1999]

Sargent asks (of Spatch), "Yay! Time for my birthday pony ride, Uncle
  Spatch?"
Spatch says (to sargent), "Yep. You get ol' Fireball in the back corral.
  Watch out, he's feelin mighty cranky today."
Sargent says, "Whee, that was fun! I hope I won't be walking bowlegged like
  this for long, though!"
Marvin exclaims, "Aargh!"
Marvin goes home.
<Marvin> Marvin's undead tomato-frying nemesis yanks him away from the
  keyboard.
<Marvin> Is anybody there? I don't mean to be a bother, but my ice is
  melting.
Marvin jumps into the lounge and shouts "BOO!"
Marvin says, "Hello again."
<Adam> Dilbon says, "It was about a year ago when I first burned my
  finger."
Adam walks into the lounge. Saves on the teleportation charges, and it's
  good exercise.
Marvin says, "Hi."
Iain arrives from the east.
Iain says, "Hi."
Marvin says, "Hi."
Sargent says, "'lo Iain."
Marvin asks, "And what are all you happy people doing this fine day?"
Psmith says, "Working."
Iain says, "Taking a break from working./"
Iain says, "Yay. On rgif: 'AWITL guess-the-verb'."
Marvin enters a room to the southeast.  As the door closes, you hear
  someone say, 'Holy mackrel woman!'.
Iain says, "I bet the answer is 'fuck 'em', as usual."
Marvin enters from the southeast, thoroughly spoiled.
Iain says, "Ha!"
Sargent asks, "AWITL?"
Iain says, "A Week In The Life."
Sargent says, "Ah."
Iain says, "In another thread, someone complains that HTML-TADS hangs on
  him."
Iain says, "He later posts and says he didn't realise he had to use the
  mouse."
Sargent laughs.
Iain says, "Hm. That's not unreasonable, I guess, when you're supposed to
  be playing a text adventure."
Psmith asks, "Y'can't use HTML-TADS without a mouse?"
Adam says, "Hmmm."
Sargent says, "What's funny is I had the same thing happen to me when
  testing it."
Adam says, "Can you no-- what Ps asked."
Iain says, "This is in one of the comp games."
Iain says, "On the splash screen. You'll know the one if you've played
  it."
Adam says, "Right, right."
Psmith says (to Iain), "Well, I don't have HTML TADS."
Adam asks, "But there's no recourse if, say, you don't have a pointing
  device?"
Psmith says (to Iain), "There isn't an X version that I'm aware of."
Adam says, "Seems unlikely in this day and age, but you never know..."
Iain says, "Anyway, to answer your question -- yes, you-know-who could have
  checked for keyboard events as well as mouse events."
Sargent says (to Psmith), "But you can run it under WINE, if you're so
  disposed."
Iain says, "But I guess he doesn't. That's a bug."
Adam says, "Hmm."
Adam says, "Well, I suppose that you can still play it in text mode"
Psmith says (to Sargent), "WINE is a crashy heap of bugs, in my
  experience."
Iain asks (of Adam), "Who would have a graphical display, but no pointing
  device?"
Adam says, "Seems rather a shame, though.  It occurs to me that a blind
  player might not have a pointing device, but *would* much rather hear the
  speech within the game rather than have that speech rendered by a synth"
Sargent says (to Psmith), "The folks I had test HTML TADS under WINE didn't
  have trouble."
Iain says (to Adam), "Ah, I see."
Sargent says (to Adam), "Though a blind player could play such a game with
  the graphics turned off but sounds turned on."
Adam says, "Also the music, etc."
Psmith says (to Sargent), "WINE's too large to keep around when it doesn't
  work on 90% of things."
Iain says (to Adam), "Hmmm... a blind person could probably turn off
  graphics but leave the sound on."
Iain says, "_If_ the game checked for this, it would work."
Adam says, "Is that true?  If so, great."
Iain says, "If the game blithely tried to display graphics, the blind
  person is screwed."
Sargent says (to Adam), "It's true if the game is written well."
Adam says, "Someone should capture this conversation and send it to / save
  it for you-know-who."
Iain says, "In TADS, you need to check sysinfo(). And in Glk-based systems
  (like Glulx) you have to do something similar."
Adam says (to alex), "log 60 htmltads"
Sargent says (to Iain), "I'm putting together a little module to check
  version number, HTML-ability, and graphics capabilities, in the hopes that
  more people will then check these things."
Adam says (to alex), "log htmltads 65"
Iain says, "Heh."
Alex exclaims, "Awwk! Log started!"
Iain asks (of Sargent), "Great. And this will go into your bundle of
  modules?"
Sargent says (to Iain), "It'll be a standalone. The bundle of modules got
  too unweildy."
Iain says, "Hm. Peter Berger posts a combination apology/insult."
<Jaybird> I was dropping a lightbulb one day, and it hit a desk and
  busted.
Jaybird suddenly appears from out of nowhere!
Spatch says, "I'm sorry, you fuckers."
Adam says (to Alex), "log off"

[Log finished Mon Oct 18 09:19:36 1999]