Is there such a thing as an inform interpreter that works more like a 2 page book?
Yes. It’s built in Silverlight/C# and the source is in the textfyre github repository. There’s one other person adapting it for their uses. It’s not a trivial challenge, but it works very well.
Not sure on Inform but Tads 3 lets you use (limited) HTML code, so for example you could put a 2-cell HTML table up to emulate 2 pages of a book and have pretty much what you’re asking for with ease. Should be able to do something like that in Inform 7 as well using GLUX commands. I’m still fairly new to Inform though so I don’t know the code off the top of my head. For Tads 3 it would look something like this:
startRoom: Room 'Introduction'
"<table><tr><td>This is the left hand side of your 2 pages of text.
This is the left hand side of your 2 pages of text.</td>
<td>This is the right hand side of your 2 pages of text.
This is the right hand side of your 2 pages of text.
<a href=\"examine page 3\">(click here to go to page 3)</a></td></tr>
</table>"
;
DefineIAction(ExaminePageThree)
execAction(){
"<table><tr><td>This is the left hand side of your 2 pages of text.
This is the left hand side of your 2 pages of text.</td>
<td>This is the right hand side of your 2 pages of text.
This is the right hand side of your 2 pages of text.
<a href=\"examine page 5\">(click here to go to page 5)</a></td></tr>
</table>";
}
;
VerbRule(ExaminePageThree)
'examine' 'page' '3'
: ExaminePageThreeAction
verbPhrase = 'examine page 3'
;
// ...and so on
DefineIAction(ExaminePageFive)
execAction(){
"<table><tr><td>This is the left hand side of your 2 pages of text.
This is the left hand side of your 2 pages of text.</td>
<td>This is the right hand side of your 2 pages of text.
This is the right hand side of your 2 pages of text.
<a href=\"examine page 7\">(click here to go to page 7)</a></td></tr>
</table>";
}
;
VerbRule(ExaminePageFive)
'examine' 'page' '5'
: ExaminePageFiveAction
verbPhrase = 'examine page 5'
;