TADS 3 Technical Manual Wish List

The TADS 3 Technical Manual (part of the TADS 3 documentation set - see the TADS 3 page) is a collection of articles that aim to cover particular aspects of the system in depth. The main thrust of the TM is to provide practical "how to" information, especially for tasks that require pulling together knowledge of several different TADS components.

The nature of this mission makes the TM inherently a work in progress. As time goes on, we plan to expand it with new articles covering tasks that aren't well covered by other documentation.

We'd like the TM's evolution to be guided by the needs of authors working with TADS 3, so we're keeping this public "wish list" for future articles. We hope this will encourage two kinds of participation. First, if there's something you'd like to see added to the manual, and it's not already listed here, drop us a note and we'll add it to the list. Second, we're actively seeking user-contributed articles, so if there's something on the list that you've already figured out on your own, we'd be thrilled if you'd share your expertise in the form of an article for the next edition. Of course, we'd be happy to have articles on TADS 3 technical topics not on the list as well - the list is here to give you ideas, not to nix ideas you already have.

See the contact page for information on how to reach us.

Here's the list.

Translating the library

Describe in detail the steps in creating a non-English translation of the library. Explain the base library's architecture: the division of the library into "generic" and language-specific parts, the interfaces that the generic library require the language module to define, the command input grammar, and the message-string module. Explain how to handle common features of natural languages (gender, number, pronouns, inflection), and (where applicable) the generic library's provisions for these. Ideally, this article would be based on an actual example translation, to show the practical details.