Error

Matt_Bates · October 30, 2016, 8:17pm

Hello,

I am working my way through Aaron Reed’s fine book “Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7”. I have just reached a part where, when I compile, the results message displays this message only: “>font siz”. When I switch to the Console tab from the Report tab under Results, I see this:

I’ve now read your source text, which is 9535 words long.
I’ve also read Standard Rules by Graham Nelson, which is 42655 words long.
I’ve also read English Language by Graham Nelson, which is 2297 words long.
I’ve also read Small Kindnesses by Aaron Reed, which is 1801 words long.
I’ve also read Poor Man’s Mistype by Aaron Reed, which is 812 words long.
I’ve also read Numbered Disambiguation Choices by Aaron Reed, which is 782 words long.
I’ve also read Smarter Parser by Aaron Reed, which is 11357 words long.
In Part - Scenes:

→ An internal error has occurred: not a description. The current sentence
is ‘Instead of smoking during a dramatic scene’ (source text, line 598);
the error was detected at line 111 of “inform7/Chapter 20/Descriptions.w”.
This should never happen, and I am now halting in abject failure.

Compiler finished with code 1

Can anyone tell me what is happening here? The phrase that seems to be the issue is: Instead of smoking during a dramatic scene: say “This really isn’t the time for that, man.”
When I remove it, everything appears to be hunky dory. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

zarf · October 30, 2016, 8:31pm

An “abject failure” error means you’ve stumbled over a compiler bug.

In this case, it’s a known bug: inform7.com/mantis/view.php?id=1823

zarf · October 30, 2016, 8:34pm

To work around this, you can rephrase this as

Instead of smoking when a dramatic scene is happening: say "This really isn't the time for that, man."

Matt_Bates · October 30, 2016, 8:43pm

Thank you so much, zarf. That worked perfectly. I really appreciate your help.

Matt_Bates · November 9, 2016, 2:09pm

Ok, a new issue that I cannot seem to find the answer to. This is the message I get when I try to compile:

Translating the Source - Failed
The application ran your source text through the Inform 7 compiler, as usual, but the compiler unexpectedly failed. This should not happen even if your source text is gibberish, so you may have uncovered a bug in the program.

When a program like the I7 compiler fails, it typically returns an error number: this time, the number was 10, and that probably indicates that the compiler failed to manage its data structures properly. Perhaps you created a complicated situation on which it has not been fully tested.

The best option now is probably to reword whatever was last changed and to try again. Subsequent attempts will not be affected by the failure of this one, so there is nothing to be gained by restarting the application or the computer. A failed run should never damage the source text, so your work cannot be lost.

If you think it likely that the Inform 7 compiler is at fault, please check that you have the currently distributed build of the system: if you have, please consider taking the time to fill out a bug report at the Inform bug tracker (inform7.com/bugs). If you think the fault may be due to a problem in an extension you’re using, then please contact the extension’s author directly.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Google tells me that this often comes up when the sourse text contains a semi-colon where there should be a regular colon in an if statement. For me, it seems to happen when I add this line of code:

after, of course, downloading and installing this extension. When I remove this line of code, it compiles normally. Any solutions to this?

Thanks in advance.

Matt_Bates · November 10, 2016, 2:14pm

Ok, I tried reinstalling Inform and got the same result. I also tried just copy/pasting the source code for the extension into the source code for Sand-dancer and received the same result.

I know that there have been changes to Inform since Sand-dancer was written… perhaps that is causing the problem.