Chapter 23: Releasing
23.22. Titling and abbreviation

The main title of the map is the value of "title" for the whole map, so for instance we might write:

Index map with title set to "Oxford and its Environs".

The subtitle settings apply to the subtitles used for each of the levels, so for instance

Index map with subtitle of level -1 set to "Tunnels and Sewers".

Names of individual rooms can be controlled with:

Index map with name of Radcliffe Camera set to "Library".

(By default, the name of a room is its name in the main IF project, of course.) The smallest writing on the map is normally that used to label unorthodox or unclear exits (in particular, those going from one layer to another): this is what the "annotation" size, font and colour are used for.

For most ways to set up the map, it's a practical necessity to abbreviate names of rooms, or they will spill out all over each other. Inform does this using the "room-name-length" setting. (The "annotation-name-length" is analogous.) For instance, if this setting is 5, then Inform will reduce the text of a name to at most 5 characters. It does this by successively throwing out spaces, lower case vowels, then other lower case letters, punctuation marks and finally upper case letters, always starting at the back of the name and working inwards: the process stops as soon as the name is short enough. For instance, "Reading" is abbreviated to "Redng", "Shangri-La" to "Shn-La" and "Cloud-Cuckoo-Land" to "C-C-L". The result can be a little comical, but is surprisingly unambiguous in practice. Abbreviation can effectively be abolished by raising the "room-name-length" to 128 (the highest permitted level), and note that the setting can be changed for individual rooms, so it is possible to have some room names abbreviated and others not, or in different degrees.


435
* Example  Port Royal 5
Port Royal scenario given instructions for an EPS map.

RB
436
* Example  Baedeker
Creating a floorplan of the cathedral using the locations from previous examples.

RB

If our map is largely or entirely set inside a single building, we might want to produce something that resembles a floorplan. It's possible to do this with a little tweaking, like so:

"Baedeker"

Dome is a room. North of Dome is North Chapel. South of the Dome is South Chapel. West of the Dome is Western End. Quiet Corner is northwest of the Dome, north of Western End, and west of North Chapel. Loud Corner is east of North Chapel, northeast of Dome, and north of Eastern End. Eastern End is north of Dim Corner and east of Dome. Dim Corner is southeast of Dome and east of South Chapel. Ruined Corner is southwest of Dome, west of South Chapel, and south of Western End.

The church door is east of Eastern End and west of the Courtyard. The church door is a door.

Index map with
    room-shape set to "square" and
    room-size set to 60 and
    room-name-size set to 9 and
    room-name-length set to 13 and
    route-thickness set to 20 and
    room-outline set to off and
    map-outline set to off and
    route-colour set to "White" and
    room-colour set to "White" and
    room-shape of Dome set to "circle" and
    room-size of Dome set to 80 and
    EPS file.

Now we have a map made of white lines and boxes over a white background, which is not very exciting. If, however, we put a layer of black under this and slightly adjust the room shapes (using an image editor such as Adobe Illustrator), we can produce something that plausibly resembles a floorplan or museum map, like so:

437
* Example  Bay Leaves and Honey Wine
Creating a map of Greece using the locations from previous examples.

RB


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