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DM4 Errata  

Misprints in the Manual

The Inform Designer's Manual, Fourth Edition (or DM4) was carefully proof-read by teams of readers steeped in Inform lore, through six or seven levels of proof, before going to press, so naturally it still contains mistakes here and there. This errata list aims to collect together all those which have been found.

Throughout the DM4, 'Giovanni Ricardi' should be changed to 'Giovanni Riccardi'. My particular apologies to Giovanni, whose work on Italian-language Inform has been tireless. [GN]

§1.11, p. 29: The code to print a slash on the next letter is "@/" rather than "@\". [KB]

§2.5, p. 45: The diagram of the parsing array seems to be incorrect. Entries 4 and 5 should contain "3" and "2" (length and position of "GET"), and entries 8 and 9 should contain "2" and "6" (length and position of "IN"). Also, on p. 481 the answer to Exercise 81 wrongly refers to §2.4. [RF]

§7.3, p. 98: The description of SHOWOBJ says that it can take an object number as its argument; this is not true. [RF]

§23, p. 174: In the Treasure class definition, the reference to '(the) second' should be '(the) noun' or '(the) self' -- at this point 'noun' refers to the Treasure object and 'second' refers to the packing_case. [RF]

§33, p. 238: This might be an appropriate place to mention the constant MANUAL_PRONOUNS, which appears not to be documented. [RF]

§36, pp. 260-261: Twice, the DM4 says that the Unicode number for a copyright symbol is 9A. The copyright symbol number is really A9. [ES]

§40, p. 290: In the last sentence of the first para, the word 'to' is missing from the phrase 'report it to the author'. [RF]

§42, p. 309: In the para beginning 'There are four output streams for text...', the clause '..."script on" switches it off;' should read '..."script off" switches it off;'. [SK]

§A2, p. 412: The n_to entry does not mention that the value can be a string. [RF]

§A2, p. 412: In the add_to_scope entry, the second mention of PlaceInScope should perhaps be AddToScope. Also, AddToScope should appear in §A3 on p. 419, and in the Index. [RF]

§A2, p. 416: In the heading for the description of the 'orders' property, there should be the 'plus-in-a-circle' symbol meaning 'additive'. [CK]

Table 2B, p. 520: The escape sequences for ZSCII characters 203, 204, 213 and 214 are respectively @/o, @/O, @cc and @cC, rather than as shown. [RF]

Table 5, p. 523: The definition should read 'Lowstring <new-name> <text>'. [RF]

Index, p. 555: The entry for 'Richard Dyer' should appear under D as 'Dyer, Richard'. [GN]

Index, p. 557: The entry for 'special (grammar token)' points to p. 222, but no information is provided there. [RF]


Last updated 29 January 2004. The librarian in charge of this page is Roger Firth. Please email any comments, suggestions or corrections to roger@firthworks.com.