![]() | Chapter 22: Releasing | ![]() ![]() |
22.8. The Materials folder |
If a work is going to be accompanied by other files, it is a good idea to gather these together, and this becomes obligatory when using some of the more advanced "Release along with..." options.
Inform adopts the following convention:
The files associated with the project Whatever.inform should all be kept in a subfolder called "Whatever Materials" in the same folder that contains the project.
For example, if we have a project filenamed Magician.inform which lives in a folder called "Works in Progress", then files might be arranged like so:
Works in Progress
Magician Materials
Collegio.pdf
Mating Wyverns.mp3
Magician.inform
Of course the project's filename might not match the title given inside the work itself - it might be an abbreviation, say, or a working title. If so then the name of the Materials folder has to match the name of the .inform file, not the title.
If the advanced "Release along with..." options in the next few sections are used, then Inform will create such a Materials folder if it does not already exist, and it will further create a subfolder called Release within that. This is where it will always place the story file it releases, together with anything released "along with" the story - Inform will not need to put up a dialogue box asking us where to save the story file, because there is already a natural place. For instance, after a successful click on Release, we might then see:
Works in Progress
Magician Materials
Collegio.pdf
Mating Wyverns.mp3
Release
Collegio.pdf
Magician.zblorb
Mating Wyverns.mp3
Magician.inform
where "Magician.zblorb" is the actual story file produced by Inform. Note that Inform has made copies of the files to be released with it - the idea is that
the Release subfolder contains only what Inform makes, and
everything in the Release subfolder can be thrown away at any time.
This is especially useful if we're releasing along with a website (see below), as then the Release subfolder will be exactly what needs to be uploaded to a server to be shown to the world. Equally, the Release subfolder is what can be zipped up and uploaded to archives or (if small enough) emailed out.
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