Login
Remember
IF Answers
Ask a Question

# Are there any shortcuts for typing character formatting in Inform?

+2 votes
53 views
asked Mar 31 in Authoring by AndrewS (250 points)

Typing [bold text] and so forth becomes really tiresome. Can this be cut down?

- inform7
- programming
- formatting

commented Mar 31 by Paul_Erdos (39 points)
perhaps a question about the specifics of line breaks and text stuff is in order. It'd be nice to have a shortlist of all the things that cause them implicitly, ie, an item does this after it describes, a room description has these properties. I saw this sort of description in the docs, but it didn't have a lot of examples / ways to change this behaviour.
(I also think that doing things implicitly like that is bad, but that's none of my business.)

## 1 Answer

+2 votes
answered Mar 31 by AndrewS (250 points)

Yes.

    to say b:
      say "[bold text]";

    to say i:
      say "[italic text]";

    to say r:
      say "[regular text]";

    to say fl: [I always forget the precise wording here]
      say "[fixed letter spacing]";

    to say vl: [here too]
      say "[variable letter spacing]";

    to say ob:
      say "[bracket]";

    to say cb:
      say "[close bracket]";

Also, one thing many people miss is that [apostrophe] can be shortened to ['].

commented Mar 31 by AndrewS (250 points)
Shortening paragraphs and line breaks are a bit iffier, as sometimes Inform throws in an extra line break. So these are a bit riskier.
to say p:
say "[paragraph break]";
to say l:
say "[line break]";
You may be able to get away with
to say l:
(- print"^"; -)
Which forces a line break. p could be ^^.
commented Mar 31 by Paul_Erdos (39 points)
My OCD still wants *.md support, like "[md] Stuff _only_ gets formatted inside *this* section, nowhere else.[dm]"

## Related questions

- Is there a way to reduce the right margin for a play-in-browser website released by Inform 7?
- How does one properly format italics/bold text in title entries in Menus by Emily Short?
- What are some of the classic Inform 7 mistakes to look out for?
- What are the exact details and relations concerning the player, yourself, and your former self in Inform 7?
- Is there a maximum rules limit in Inform 6?

...