Is there a smart way to route specific text to a secondary text window? Here is what I am currently doing (I have no idea if this is a dumb thing I’ve hacked together or if there is an easier way, my current understanding of Inform is very beginner level):
Opening a secondary text window using the Flexible Windows extension.
Writing a “Before” rule that could apply to any situation, that uses the Text Capture extension to capture the text that I want to print to the secondary window.
For example, the player wants to examine a book, the description of which is "“A lengthy study on the different species of whale. The keeper has taken margin notes and you dutifully copy the pertinent parts to your journal.” I add in a before rule:
Before examining the book:
start capturing text;
say "The Baleen, or 'Whalebone' whale is named such due to the presence of Baleen (a form of Keratin bristle-plate that the whale uses to filter for food) in the mouths of this whale species. The Whalebone whale opens its mouth to intake water; then, when it closes its mouth again, it forces the water out through the Baleen plate, which allows the water to pass through while retaining any small fish.";
display secondary text;
continue the action;
which uses this rule:
To display secondary text:
stop capturing text;
refresh the bottom window;
and refreshing the bottom window is the Flexible Windows rule:
Rule for refreshing the bottom window:
say captured text;
Which works! The player examines the book, and the captured text is routed over to the secondary window (which the player can open and close at will), it’s all great. EXCEPT, the text capture extension has a maximum capture buffer length of 512, which–although it sounds like it might be fine–is too restrictive for what I’m trying to do (essentially preventing me from copying over any text longer than 512 characters). I know you might think here that the easy solution is to break up the chunks of text into smaller captures and route them across one after the other, but it’s more complicated than that because there are times when I would like the text capture to also grab text that is being fed in by other rules that I can’t necessarily control on the fly, that would overflow the buffer.
Is there another way to selectively route text over to the second window – frequently, and at will? (Essentially the functionality that I have but without the buffer restriction).
Googling did throw up an extension called Text Window Input-Output Control by Erik Temple which claims to do this exactly, but I think the extension is broken (Opening a blank project with only the line “Include Text Window Input-Output Control by Erik Temple.” errors out immediately on trying to compile).
Any help is appreciated,
Thanks