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Zoom Manual - Troubleshooting
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<h1>
Troubleshooting
</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#General">General</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#genimg">Version 6 images</a>
<li><a href="#genfont">Fonts</a>
<li><a href="#issues">Issues with specific games</a>
</ul>
<li><a href="#osx">Mac OS X</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#macdata">Infocom data files</a>
<li><a href="#defterp">Making Zoom the default interpreter</a>
<li><a href="#osxfonts">Fonts</a>
<li><a href="#osxmessages">'Erroneous entry in .zoomrc' messages</a>
<li><a href="#osximg">Images</a> (while compiling)
</ul>
<li><a href="#xwin">X-Windows</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#xwinimg">Images</a>
<li><a href="#xwinfont">Fonts</a>
</ul>
<li><a href="#older">Older versions</a>
</ul>
<h2><a name="General">
General
</h2>
<h3><a name="genimg">
Version 6 images
</h3>
<p>
In order to see images for version 6 games, you will requires the
resources in Blorb format: Zoom does not support any other format
for images. All new games should come with images in this
format. For the old infocom games, Blorb versions of the game
resources are available from the IF-Archive, at
<a
href="http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXmedia.html">http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXmedia.html</a>.
See the sections on configuration for information on how to get
Zoom to load these resources.
</p>
<p>
Zoom does not support JPEG images: there are currently patent
issues with this format.
</p>
<h3><a name="genfont">
Fonts
</h3>
<p>
Some version 6 games may not deal with proportional fonts
adequately: if you find a game is drawing text in the wrong place,
try using a fixed pitch font for the 'roman' style.
</p>
<h3><a name="issues">
Issues with specific games
</h3>
<p>
This section details some general problems that exist within specific
games.
</p>
<dl>
<dt>'Black on black' problem (Varicella, Only After Dark)</dt>
<dl>
It seems that some games expect a white-on-black default colour
scheme. Zoom uses black-on-white by default (and as of 1.0.1 has
no way to change this), which is default in some
interpreters. This problem is <b>not</b> a bug in Zoom, rather
the game: Varicella, for instance, asks for a black
background with the default foreground, which is to say black
on black.
<p>
To fix this in Varicella, you have to play without colour. In
Only After Dark, you can save the game after the colours make
the game illegible, then restart and restore to produce a
legible game.
<p>
Future versions of Zoom will contain options to fix these
problems.
</dl>
</dl>
<h2><a name="osx">
Mac OS X
</h2>
<h3><a name="macdata">
Infocom data files
</h3>
<p>
The Macintosh version of the Infocom games are distributed as a
package containing both the interpreter and the data. In order to
run these games under Zoom, you will need to seperate the data
from the program. Fortunately, that isn't hard. To do the
conversion, copy the game to the desktop, then fire up a Terminal
session and use the following commands:
</p>
<pre>
cp "~/Desktop/GAME" "~/Desktop/GAME.z5"
</pre>
<p>
(Substituting the name of the game for GAME). The file 'GAME.z5'
will now just contain the data, and you should be able to
double-click it to load it into Zoom. This technique may also work
for other files that you know are Z-Code files, but that you are
unable to open in Zoom for some reason.
</p>
<h3><a name="defterp">
Making Zoom the default interpreter
</h3>
<p>
If you have another interpreter installed, it may be set as the
default editor for Infocom files: this means that when you open a
game in the finder, that other interpreter loads instead of
Zoom. If you want Zoom to be the default interpreter for a game
(or for all games), select that game in the finder, choose 'Show
Info' (Command-I, or from the File menu), and choose Zoom from the
'Open with Application' dialog. Click 'Change All' to set Zoom as
the default interpreter for all games of this type.
</p>
<h3><a name="osxfonts">
Fonts
</h3>
<p>
Zoom offers both QuickDraw and Quartz font rendering. Unicode is
supported in both systems. The Quartz system is, however, somewhat
slower than its QuickDraw equivalent (partly due to the lack of
adequate functions for measuring text dimensions).
</p>
<h3><a name="osxmessages">
'Erroneous entry' messaegs
</h3>
<p>
Certain 'cracked' copies of the Infocom games have garbage in
the serial number field. With the 1.0.1beta series of releases,
Zoom would write a corrupted preferences file for these games
(meaning Zoom would not start up). The current version of Zoom can
read these corrupted files, but will display 'Erroneous entry'
messages while loading. These messages will go away next time Zoom
saves the configuration file: open and close the preferences
dialog to force this to happen.
</p>
<p>
If Zoom fails to start due to a configuration file problem (much
less likely these days), type the following into a terminal window:
</p>
<pre>
$ mv ~/.zoomrc ~/broken-zoomrc.txt
</pre>
<p>
This is always a bug. Email me at <a
href="mailto:andrew@logicalshift.demon.co.uk">andrew@logicalshift.demon.co.uk</a>,
attaching the 'broken-zoomrc.txt' file.
</p>
<h3><a name="osximg">
Images
</h3>
<p>
(This only applies to people compiling Zoom)
</p>
<p>
If image quality is low, this may be because your version of Zoom
was compiled using QuickTime to draw its images. This happens if
Zoom was compiled without libpng available: it is highly
recommended to install libpng if you are compiling under Mac OS X
(binary releases have libpng built-in, so this won't be an issue).
</p>
<h2><a name="xwin">
X-Windows
</h2>
<h3><a name="xwinimg">
Images
</h3>
<p>
When you compile Zoom, make sure that libpng is available, or
image support will be disabled.
</p>
<p>
If you find image rendering is slow, make sure that optimisation
was turned on when you compiled Zoom. <code>./configure
CFLAGS=-O9</code> will always do the trick. If you find images are
still too slow, you may find that undefining QUALITY_HIGH at the
start of image_libpng.c has some effect on the speed.
</p>
<h3><a name="xwinfont">
Fonts
</h3>
<p>
Note that the default setting for anti-aliasing has changed with
the release version of 1.0.1. Because of the potential for
problems, the default setting has been changed to 'no'. You won't
notice this if you've created your own .zoomrc file. You can
change the default setting by editting
/usr/local/share/zoom/zoomrc (look for the line 'antialias no').
</p>
<p>
The font situation under X-Windows is slightly confused. The
standard X font system (which Zoom prefers to use as a last
resort) does not support anti-aliasing or Unicode. Xft is the
preferred rendering system: it has full support for Unicode, it's
fast and it's flexible. Unfortunately, it might require some
configuration on your system. If games render strangely, it may be
that Xft is not set up, and is using daft defaults for the fixed
pitch fonts.
</p>
<p>
If you have problems with the font rendering, it might well be
Xft. To check this, set 'antialias' to 'no' in the .zoomrc file
and see if that solves the problem. If it does, it may be worth
taking the time to set up Xft properly (if you use KDE, this will
also allow you to use the antialiased fonts there).
</p>
<p>
Xft is set up through the configuration file 'XftConfig'. If you
have X installed under /usr/X11R6/, this should be in
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/ by default. A minimal file might be:
</p>
<pre>
dir "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType"
dir "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
</pre>
<p>
Remove the first line if you don't have a TrueType font directory
in your installation. See <a
href="http://keithp.com/~keithp/fonts/XftConfig">http://keithp.com/~keithp/fonts/XftConfig</a>
for a larger example of an XftConfig file. Most X11 distributions
should have a courier font in the Type1 directory.
</p>
<p>
Zoom sometimes has trouble calculating the screen metrics for a
T1Lib font. This is not usually noticable, but it does mean that
you should not use T1Lib for the fixed pitch fonts, and it creates
a glitch on the status bar in Infocom's Arthur (T1Lib fonts are
specified by filename rather than by their X font specifier).
</p>
<h2><a name="older">
Older versions
</h2>
<p>
This section lists some problems with older versions of Zoom.
</p>
<h3>1.0.1</h3>
<ul>
<li>Scroll bar was being set incorrectly under certain circumstances (disabling scrollback)
<li>@restart didn't work on Mac OS X. This bug also affected a rarely-used form of @read.
<li>Xft2 causes a crash
<li>Setting the graphics file to be a directory causes a crash (not fixed yet)
<li>The lower display for taipan.z5 is hidden by the upper (not fixed yet)
</ul>
<h3>1.0.1beta3</h3>
<ul>
<li>Compilation problem when Xft was not present (fixed in 3a)
<li>Slow screen update under certain circumstances (fixed in 3b)
<li>Some memory corruption problems
<li>.Zx (as opposed to .zx) games weren't recognised as such under
Mac OS X.
<li>Segmentation fault when playing taipan.z5
<li>Certain 'cracked' copies of the old Infocom games could cause
Zoom to write a bad configuration file.
</ul>
<h3>1.0.1beta2</h3>
<ul>
<li>Text rendered as gobbledegook when Quartz was turned on (only
certain fonts)
<li>Font preview in preferences rendered in the wrong colours (OS X)
<li>Rendering with fonts of different sizes leaves 'gaps' (OS X)
<li>Alphabet table ignored in version 6 games
<li>Alphabet table ignored when caching abbreviations
<li>ZSCII-to-Zcharacter table not always set up properly (breaks
command parsing in Shogun, or the german version of Zork)
<li>Occasional crash if a gamedir was set without a savedir
<li>X Displays with Xft but without XDBE fail to draw input text
<li>'Please enter filename' messages displayed after the
save/open dialog has completed (Mac OS X)
<li>Various problems with promptless file saving under Mac OS X
<li>You can load resources by dragging, but not savefiles
<li>No drag highlights shown
<li>Under Mac OS X 10.2, some modal loops are never exitted
(those initiated by carbon_display_message and
carbon_ask_question. I *think* this bug never occurs in
OS X 10.1)
<li>Under Mac OS X and v6, the display sometimes isn't updated
<li>@print_char doesn't convert from ZSCII to unicode. Breaks
And the Waves Choke the Wind.
</ul>
<h3>1.0.1beta1</h3>
<ul>
<li>Spec 1.1 errors:
<ul>
<li>New header extension words not implemented
<li>@save/@restore always prompt
<li>@sound_data is not a branch instruction (will crash the
game)
<li>Unicode strings sometimes cut out some characters
<li>Truecolour in the upper window is a bit kronky
(Z-Machine versions other than 6)
<li>Unicode string decoder sometimes returns negative values,
leading to occasional missing characters when plotting to the
upper window (not v6)
</ul>
<li>@set_font doesn't update v6 structures correctly
<li>@read_mouse doesn't store coordinates correctly
<li>@erase_picture always erases to white, and not the background
colour
<li>APal blorb extension ignored
<li><code>antialias</code> option does not disable Xft. (Comment
out <code>#define HAVE_XFT</code> in config.h and recompile to
disable Xft in this revision).
<li>Display drivers not reporting that they support pictures
<li>X-Windows version blinks cursor even when it doesn't have
focus
<li>Quartz renderer renders with common ligatures - 'fi' ligature
often makes a mess of the upper window in version 5 games.
</ul>
<hr>
<p class=titchy>
Zoom written by Andrew Hunter. Mail any suggestions, bug reports
or abuse to <a
href="mailto:andrew@logicalshift.demon.co.uk">andrew@logicalshift.demon.co.uk</a>
</p>
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</html>
distrib
>
Mandriva
>
2010.1
>
x86_64
>
media
>
contrib-release
>
by-pkgid
>
40f4c7dcbf1ddaa52ad4876c7c5e4ea3
>
files
>
24
