Chapter 1: Welcome to Inform
1.10. The Transcript

Whereas the Skein is a braid of all the lines so far explored, with the individual commands thought of as "knots", it shows only what was typed in: not what responses came from that. The Transcript shows both commands and responses, but can only do so for a single thread through the Skein: it always shows the one currently selected in the Skein panel, in fact, which is the one most recently played unless we choose otherwise. A typical portion of Transcript looks like so:

As this shows, the transcript has two columns: the left shows what was actually printed, while the right shows what should have been printed. If they match, the command's text is coloured green. We can tell Inform what "should have been" printed by using the "Bless" button, which tells it that the text printed this time was in fact correct.

On the other hand, if the response printed differs from the "blessed" correct version, the command turns red and the variation is underlined:

Some writers of IF like to work backwards from a transcript of the game they want to produce, and for them, this feature will be helpful as a running picture of what works so far. Other authors may not use the Skein/Transcript feature at all until right at the end of a project, in testing before publication, when it becomes very important to be able to make small changes in one area without upsetting everything else. Either way, the Skein and Transcript together make a very powerful testing aid.


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