Common Commands Sidebar issues

[alice-blue]

There are three bugs that manifest when using Common Commands Sidebar that I have not been able to fix. I suspect at least two of them are related to Flexible Windows or one of its included extensions.

1. Crashes in Spatterlight. (Not fixable)

   Example Code:

   Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold.
   
   Red Window is a g-window. The main window spawns Red Window.
   The background color of Red Window is "#FF0000".
   
   Instead of jumping:
   open Red Window.
   
   Place is a room.
   

   With the above code, this sequence of events will crash Spatterlight (in a testing release):
   RULES. ACTIONS. Resize the window. LOOK. crash (becomes unresponsive).

   

2. In Gargoyle, the text color used in a new window will also be the color used for the cursor in the main window. So, for instance, if you're using white text in the new window, and your main window has a white background, the cursor will totally disappear in Gargoyle. (Fixed--thanks Dannii!)

   Example code:

   Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold.
   
   Window A is a g-window spawned by the main window.
   
   Table of User Styles (continued)
   window (a g-window) color (a text)
   Window A    "#ffffff"
   
   The background color of Window A is "#123456".
   
   After looking:
   open Window A.
   
   Place is a room.
   

3. Refreshing the window may result in an extra line break in the main window. I think this has already been noted elsewhere. (Fixed in FW--see issue#32. Thanks, Dannii!)

This is my first attempt at an extension, so insight on these issues, or other suggestions about the extension, are welcome. I'm trying to make it very low-effort for the story author.

[curiousdannii]

Spatterlight doesn't give you any error messages? And it happens without evening opening the red window (by jumping)?

Could you put together a minimal example code for the second problem?

[alice-blue]

My understanding is that Spatterlight becomes unresponsive. I've edited the original post to include a screenshot of the crash. Yes, it happens in this scenario even without opening the red window.

I've also added example code for the second problem. (And now the list numbering is off...)

[curiousdannii]

I don't think I'll be able to test or diagnose the first one, and I don't think spatterlight is being maintained any more. I will take a look at the second, but again might not be able to do anything. The third I should be able to fix, I just keep forgetting. (To fix the formatting, start each paragraph with two spaces. Though not inside the code blocks, which counts as one paragraph.)

[alice-blue]

Ok, thanks. Re: # 1: I've added a warning for players if Spatterlight is detected, telling them to switch to a different interpreter to avoid crashing, and also mentioned in the documentation that Spatterlight is liable to crash with FW. I don't know that there's anything else I can do about it.

[alice-blue]

@curiousdannii The only thing left to do in this issue is #2, do I assign it to you, or...?

(Oops, tagged the wrong person, sorry other Dannii!)

[curiousdannii]

It will now reset the cursor colour to black. If you want to set it to a different colour, you can set the Gargoyle cursor color variable.

[BroadcastGames]

I tried this extension out in Inform 7 6M62, and it fails.

Line 36 seems to be the problem:
https://github.com/i7/extensions/blob/master/Alice%20Grove/Common%20Commands%20Sidebar.i7x#L36

Changing it to say "rock number" instead of "rock" seems to have worked:

 The rock number of the sidebar is 225.  [For use in a CSS stylesheet.]