Inform 7 Extensions submissions

It has come to my attention that extensions authors have been submitting extensions and they have essentially been disappearing into a email black hole. I don’t know why I’m not getting them, but I take full blame - it’s completely my fault for not paying attention here. Rather than try to diagnose the email issues with the ISP I’m using, I ask that authors resubmit their extensions to my personal email address (mark.musante@gmail.com) and I will get them uploaded ASAP.

Please accept my apologies for the lack of updates. It should take less than 24 hours for me to get the extensions uploaded once you email them to me. If you have not heard from me in that time, then please ping me either at my email address or you can tweet me at @mmusante (or, for those of you who have my mobile number, please don’t hesitate to text me).

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On what date did you receive the last one?

Thanks, I’m glad I saw this.

Good question. I scanned my roster index and it looks like the last submission I received prior to this fiasco was an update to the GerX extension on 20 December, so the problem started less than four months ago.

In truth, the submissions don’t happen very frequently. Looking over the roster, I only see 14 for all of last year, so I wasn’t concerned when I wasn’t seeing anyone send in anything.

Hi, did you receive the one I sent in last week?

No, I haven’t. Please re-send to extensions@inform7.com

Did you get the one I sent yesterday? (I wasn’t sure whether to send to the inform7.com address or the gmail address, so I tried the gmail address.)

If you mean the commands sidebar, then yes.

Ok, thanks!

Sorry for being out of touch, but what exactly does one submit extensions to? Is it the public library as seen in the (Mac) IDE?
Is that the same as inform7.com/write/extensions/?

And is anybody trying to keep github.com/i7/extensions in sync with this, or is that up to each author?

Again, sorry if this is a silly question.

Have a look at the page on the Inform 7 site for some information:
inform7.com/contribute/extensions/

There are several venues for extensions. When I submitted an extension here’s how it was explained to me:

The ones in the public library (within the IDE) must meet the most requirements (output messages must conform to how library messages are written and be tense/person neutral, the extension must have testing commands, etc.)

The ones on the website, I understand, are a little less strict and have fewer requirements. When I submitted, the archivist helped me get my extension in shape with feedback and move from the website to the internal library.

The ones on the Github are maintained externally, and I believe you just need to contact the maintainers to have your extension work hosted there. I don’t believe there are requirements, but I’d expect your extension needs to work and not break things, no matter how specialized it is.

My understanding of the extension situation is in some ways similar to HanonO’s, and in some ways different.

My impression of the extensions submitted to the public library (similar to what HanonO said) is that, since these are the official extensions that story authors can download through the Inform IDE, they have the strictest requirements, to make sure they work and are easily usable by story authors. These extensions must be submitted by email to the Inform librarian, who will then check them to make sure they follow the requirements.

The ones in this repo on Github github.com/i7/extensions are described like this: “some may be ready for public use, others may be barely working experiments.” In practice, I see this github repo being used for extensions that are works in progress, that multiple people are collaborating on, that are broken and in the process of being fixed, or that the extension author has no intention of putting in the public library (e.g. because the extension author doesn’t want to have to maintain it, or doesn’t want to update it for the latest version of Inform, or because the extension author abandoned the idea for a better one). Anyone with access to this repo can upload their extensions, anytime. So it’s “unofficial,” and more informal than the public library.

At one point, my understanding was that the extensions on the Inform website at inform7.com/write/extensions/ are older versions of public library extensions, for older versions of Inform. But as I look at it right now, I am seeing at least one newish extension on there (but not others), so I don’t know whether something has changed, or if I have just misunderstood the purpose of this section of the site.

Then there’s a fourth place for extensions–the Inform 7 extensions library site which Dannii had put together–that was intended to be a solution to the issue of I7 extensions being spread out in different places. However, some details about how the site was supposed to function–mainly, how one was supposed to differentiate between extensions that were in different states of completion/function–were never totally clear to me. Here’s the github repo for the site: i7el.herokuapp.com/

Submissions for the Public Library mark.musante@gmail.com (see http://inform7.com/contribute/extensions/ for more information

The list on http://inform7.com/write/extensions/ is only for those extensions which do not meet the requirements of the Public Library