Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in adventures in Mozilla's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, February 6th, 2007
11:48 am [onib]	0.8 Nightly 7 WooHoo! How did I miss Gnusto getting a new version for the first time in a year and a half? Anyhow, I quickly downloaded it to a PC running Windows XP Professional in Firefox 2.0.0.1. I was excited to see it actually install again. However, my excitement abated when I immediately ran into a problem with a file. First off, to test, I clicked on the link to Zork 1 in the Gnusto page that automatically comes up. I did not see any complaint, but the link did not seem to do anything. Copying the link location into the location bar did not load the page either. So, I downloaded the z5 file and opened it locally. Locally, it showed the opening script and began to play. However, whenever the text reached the top of the window, instead of scrolling off, the game halted with the "Press any key for more..." message in the bottom left. This happened whether it was run in a tab or a window. Is there a local setting that can be changed to turn off scrolling or something else to get this working again? Thanks again for bringing this development back to life! (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 29th, 2005
7:59 pm [onib]	Gnusto no longer works with new Firefox installation I had a massive hard disk failure, so I'm reinstalling all my applications. When it came to Firefox, I immediately went to install Gnusto, but 0.7 only works up to Firefox 1.0. Also the Firefox Extension page has loads of people begging for a new version or saying they'd never have upgraded if they'd known Gnusto would stop working. Knowing about the nightlies page, I tried installing directly from there, but 0.8 only works to Firefox 1.1. Is it easy to confirm compatability so your many fans can continue to use your excellent program? (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005
12:49 pm [onib]	Trinity screen pauses I've noticed another little oddity. Infocom's Trinity uses several screen pauses for dramatic purposes. Normally, this is no problem, since Gnusto catches the output and pauses at its own screen size. However, in this game, when you go through the first white door at the beginning, Trinity writes out a message about the voice in your head talking to you as you step through the door yada yada yada, then pauses for input before printing the title screen. In Gnusto, however, the moment you step through the door, the screen wipes and displays the title screen. This seems to happen even if you shrink the Gnusto window (just in case scrolling to the bottom of the output skipped the pause). The behavior seems similar to the way Gnusto behaves oddly when you restart a game. (Does it take the line feed from the "y\m" answer to the restart question and feed it back to the beginning? I always assumed that was the case since restarted games either skipped a screen pause or complained about unknown input.) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 26th, 2005
12:12 am [naltrexone]	Release Candidate 6 (Possibly Final Bits?) Okay folks, assuming Marn doesn't nail down a way to make untyped MIME handling work on OS X in the next day or two and you guys don't find any show-stoppers, Release Candidate 6 may actually be Gnusto 0.8. Notable changes from RC5 are: 1. Quotation marks and certain other punctuation marks weren't being correctly handled in v3 games (as reported in by an anonymous user-- feel free to identify yourself so we can give you credit in the release notes!). That issue is resolved in this release. 2. There are some cosmetic improvements-- the 10 Most Recently Played Games list on the File menu now lists the game name first followed by the full path in parenthesis (rather than just the full path as it did before). Under the old system, games stored in deeply buried directories could appear in the list such that the name of the game itself wasn't visible. This frequently happened when playing games launched from links online as the temp file was stored in the profile-- always a deeply nested directory. Window titling is handled better, though still not ideally in all circumstances. We've now tested under Linux the handling of links to z-code files with improper MIME types-- works fine, though you have to launch Gnusto once before it gets registered as a helper app to take care of this. Same on Windows. The feature is still disabled on OS X. The nightly is available here. Thanks for testing! (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 14th, 2005
1:38 am [naltrexone]	Gnusto 0.8 Release Candidate 5 Okay, it's another release Candidate. Getting really close, I hope. Still really need some validation under Linux. Many thanks to demonfile, who tested RC2 and reported in some bugs, many of which are (hopefully) fixed in this release! If we had T-Shirts, we'd give you one. This release fixes several bugs related to transcription, uses a different strategy for registering to handle z-code files served up with the wrong MIME type, and doesn't attempt to register as a Helper App on MacOS (doesn't work due to OS reasons, so we shouldn't offer). If you open up a Gnusto window and go to the Tools Menu in that window, there should be a "Register Gnusto as Helper App" option. Choose that and Gnusto should handle z-code files regardless of reported MIME-type from then on. As usual-- give this a shot and then try clicking on this link here. If it launches Gnusto, the Helper App registration worked. If not, let us know and we'll see what we can figure out. Update: Wow, you can tell I'm tired. I forgot to post a link to the new Release Candidate. You can download it from here. Thanks! (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 10th, 2005
3:46 am [naltrexone]	Gnusto 0.8 Release Candidate 2 Okay, second release candidate is ready to test. Should be mirrored out to this directory in the next few hours. I'll post a direct link in an edit in the morning. Need sleep now, though. Only major difference from Release Candidate 1 is that it now provides visible feedback that Gnusto is handling the download when you click on a link to a z-code file. marnanel's been testing RC1 on the Mac and it looks like the handling of incorrectly MIME-typed files may be more challenging on that platform. Some digging in Bugzilla seems to point towards it being OS-specific. Works fine on Windows, though. I suspect it works fine on Linux as well, but am still awaiting confirmation. Enjoy! edit: Here's a more proper link: Gnusto 0.8 Release Candidate 2 (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 8th, 2005
11:15 am [naltrexone]	Things to test in Gnusto 0.8 RC 1 Other than the usual "kicking the tires", there's two things I'd like to be sure work okay for other people-- especially Linux and Mac users (though validation on other Windows machines is good also). Ability to launch Gnusto in a tab-- just make sure this works and that Gnusto behaves in reasonable ways from inside a tab. Ability to launch Gnusto by clicking a link to a z-code file, even if the MIME type is set incorrectly-- be aware that you'll see no indication that anything is happening until the game is fully downloaded. But if you click on this link: Game served with wrong MIME type and Gnusto launches (without errors) it works. If it pops up a "what do you want to do with this file" dialog, it didn't. Those are the two big questions. Any other feedback and testing is also greatly appreciated. Thanks! (Comment on this)
11:00 am [naltrexone]	Finally! First Gnusto 0.8 Release Candidate Sorry for the delay! marnanel has been busy and my wife and I are expecting a baby and so have been kind of preoccupied. So feel free to try out the Gnusto 0.8 Release Candidate 1-- I don't know that you have to uninstall 0.7 first, but it might not hurt to be safe. There's still a couple of known issues that might get fixed before 0.8 Final ships, but I suspect it could ship as-is and be fine. Nothing, to my knowledge, works worse than it did in 0.7. New Features: Fully supports z-code versions 1 and 2 games (reeeeealy old Infocom games). So now all we lack is support for z6 (the graphical one). Can now run in either a tab or a separate window Has a startup screen if invoked without a game (to help the unfamiliar figure out what Interactive Fiction is and point them to some games). Layout and cursor fixes-- the "registration form" at the beginning of Bureaucracy now works just fine. Should now launch Gnusto when clicking on links to z-code files even if they're set to the wrong MIME-type. Known Issues: Launching Gnusto by clicking on a link to a game gives no visual feedback at all until the game is fully downloaded Options screen doesn't really work yet Beyond Zork still locks up solid not too far into the game. "Press any key" only responds to the spacebar. I'll make a separate post with things it would be helpful for other people to test-- I don't have easy access to Linux or MacOS test machines. Thanks! (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 3rd, 2005
1:23 am [naltrexone]	Gnusto in the News Very tiny is our fame, so it's always exciting when Gnusto gets noticed in the press. Barbara Krasnoff over at the TechWeb collective of sites wrote up a lovely review of Gnusto 0.7. As extension reviews go, it's fairly in-depth. Also, it's quite positive. Barbara is now officially on our list of Extremely Cool People. She'll get a spiffy-keen Christmas card when December rolls around. Gnusto also got a very tiny mention in an article about customizable web browsers in the New York Times. Yes, it's not much of a mention, but just seeing the word "Gnusto" in a New York Times article is mighty exciting. Actually, if anyone has (or knows where we can get) a real dead-trees copy of the New York Times (or at least the Technology section) for January 27, 2005, we'd be grateful for any leads you might have. Likewise for the print versions of any of the TechWeb magazines that contained the "Fire Up Firefox: Our Favorite Extensions" article (probably the Dec 23, 2004 issue). Anyone who helps us out with this would also be an Extremely Cool Person. Yes, that includes a Chrismas card. (Comment on this)
12:52 am [naltrexone]	0.8 Release Candidate Soon... There are still some pesky, hard-to-kill bugs we want to knock down for 1.0. But we've got plenty of improvements that are too good to shelve until then, so Gnusto 0.8 will be making an appearance soon. In fact, some time in the next week or so, we'll be posting a release candidate to this forum for testing. We'll fill you in on a full list of features and bugfixes when we post the RC, but highlights include support for z-code versions 1 and 2, a startup page with links to games, the option to run Gnusto in a Firefox tab, some good layout and bug fixes, and some modest speed improvements. We're hoping to release a very polished 1.0 around the same time Firefox 1.1 ships. Thanks so much for your enthusiasm and support... (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, January 13th, 2005
2:55 pm [naltrexone]	Ramping Back Up for a Release Yes, we stalled out a bit after the release of 0.7. But Tuesday night, I rolled up my sleeves and dove back in full-force. Full support for z-code versions 1 and 2 is now checked in to CVS. I haven't posted a test-build for others yet-- will probably hold off until we get a couple more bugfixes and features worked in. Also, Update.Mozilla.Org has re-enabled their download counter (now with some spiffy new features). The count was a hair over 7000 downloads when they disabled the counter in preparation for the onslaught of extension downloads for the FireFox 1.0 release. On the new (reset) counter, we've now crossed the 3000 download mark. So even without the month or two around FF 1.0, Gnusto has officially been downloaded over 10,000 times. It boggles the mind... We're looking to release Gnusto 1.0 in the not too distant future. I'll post again later with information on what to expect in the new release. Thanks so much for using Gnusto and extra-special thanks for the testing and bug reports. Happy New Year! -Eric (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 16th, 2004
2:12 pm [onib]	Error Message During Restores I get the following error message every time I try to restore a saved game from within Zork 3. This is while running Gnusto 0.7 on a Windows 2000 box with Service Pack 3. I haven't seen this error so far on any other game. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 9th, 2004
11:23 am [naltrexone]	Poll on Potential Gnusto Features How would you rank the following potential features for upcoming releases of Gnusto (1 is very interesting, 10 is not at all interesting): ( Tell Us What Features You Want Here ) (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 7th, 2004
6:25 pm [naltrexone]	1000 Downloads! Inside Mozilla Update Guild   Score: 0      Moves: 7     thrown bodily through the door of the Guild Hall by the Bugzilla. Mozilla Update Guild Hall You find yourself inside a large stone room consumed by what can only be described as a small hurricane of parchments. Scurrying around you at incredible speed are an endless stream of tiny gnomes ferrying stacks of scrolls and parchments from the door to a desk. Behind the desk, harried-looking Clerks swap scrolls with the gnomes, occasionally reaching back to pull down and hand over a bundle from the tall, somewhat unstable wooden shelves behind them. > give extension to clerk You manage to attract the attention of a burly looking clerk who stomps over to your end of the desk. The clerk picks up your Gnusto 0.7 exension and looks at it with a critical eye, turning it over and over in his hands. "We'll have to test it first of course," he says. The clerk grabs an incongruously large iron mallet, two branding irons and a handful of dry-roasted peanuts, then disappears into the back room with your extension. Clamorous and painful sounds waft outward from under an abruptly closed door. > wait Days pass... Clamorous and painful sounds continue to spill outward from the back room. Finally the clerk emerges from the back room, sweating profusely and covered in soot. "Your extension has been posted to the site." > ask clerk about downloads The clerk arches an oversized eyebrow at you, then sighs and pulls out an absurdly large and dusty book. He leafs through the pages and puts tick marks on a notepad while humming a tuneless tune. "In the past 2.5 days, Gnusto 0.7 has been downloaded... slightly over 1000 times." > retrieve jaw from floor You snatch the errant jawbone from the floor, dust it off, and wiggle it awkwardly back into your head. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 5th, 2004
2:39 am [naltrexone]	Gnusto 0.7 Released It's out the door and it's quite a good release. Works for FireFox 0.9 or later. All the important info is available in the Release Notes and you can install it from here. As some of you may have installed test-builds, please uninstall them before installing the release-bits (no worries-- it's easy to do and there are instructions on how to do this in the Release Notes). And be sure to check out some z3 and z4 (older Infocom) games now that they're supported. Speaking of older games-- Here are the free versions of the Zork games that were distributed by Activision to promote their newer less-texty Zork games. If you're running Gnusto 0.7, you can just click on the links to them in the browser and they'll pop up in Gnusto. (Be patient-- it's a slow server and may take a few seconds.) Have fun! And be sure to give feedback and bug reports-- the best way for us to make the product better is through your input! -Eric (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 4th, 2004
3:21 pm [naltrexone]	"Burn in Hell, Venkman" For anyone doing Gnusto debugging under FireFox 0.9+ (where else?) it would probably be handy to have a working copy of Venkman with which to debug, wouldn't it? Well, the off-the-shelf copy of Venkman will not work at all under FireFox 0.9+. And the author is rumored to have indicated that he is disinclined to support FireFox in any way. Luckily, some enterprising souls in Venkman-withdrawl sorted out the issues via this bug and there's now a highly unofficial Venkman Build that works great for most people. It seems to work great under FireFox 0.9.3 for Windows, though you must be using the tarred build of FireFox rather than the Installer-based one for it to run under Linux (or hunt down the jsd3250.so file and add it manually). Good luck! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2004
6:27 pm [naltrexone]	I don't want to go on the cart! After an admittedly extended lull, Gnusto is back and rapidly approaching release 0.7. Given the massive improvements that the Moz team has made to the handling of extensions (and especially extensions with components) in FireFox 0.9, it's a good bet that we'll be going exclusively FireFox for this release. If there's enough demand for a MozClassic release (unlikely), we'll look into what it would take to make that a reality. As this version of Gnusto works only under FireFox 0.9 and previous versions of Gnusto are incompatible with FireFox 0.9, there shouldn't be any concerns with uninstalling old releases and so forth. And FF 0.9 handles uninstallation for us from now on. Woo-hoo! Give it a whirl here: gnusto-20040802FireFox09.xpi New features: Now plays version 3 and version 4 z-code files-- this leaves only the essentially non-existent versions 1 and 2 and the graphical version 6 as unsupported Various bugfixes and improvements Known Issues: Hard lock-up early in Beyond Zork. Recommend against playing that one until we fix it. Soft lock-up early in Christminster. Status bar does not appear in version 3 and 4 games Some noun disambiguation issues in a handful of games (most notably Trinity). Please-- if you try it out and it works for you at all, let us know. If it doesn't, let us know that too. With FireFox's ability to uninstall extensions and FireFox Safe Mode to go in and uninstall ones that prevent the browser from booting, there's much much lower risk in running beta versions of extensions. And it works fine on my machine, so it must be fine, right? Thanks for keeping an eye on us-- hopefully Gnusto development is on an uptick and we'll be blazing along rapidly to 1.0... (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 9th, 2004
3:34 pm [marnanel]	Evolutionary niches Why is Frotz everywhere? Partly because it was early, I suppose, but also partly because it's written portably, in C. Terps written in Perl or elisp will only run on platforms where Perl or elisp already run, which means they must have C compilers, so Frotz will run there anyway. So what does Gnusto have that puts it where other terps can't reach? I can think of three: 1. (Where we are now:) People are happy using browsers for things. So we give them a way to play IF without leaving their browser. Cool. 2. Terps embedded in a browser can easily do things which other terps can't. Particularly, they can retrieve games automatically from the net (as we're starting to be able to do). I think this will be an important differentiating characteristic for us. 3. It would be nice if one day we can provide a tool to provide as much of the content of Gnusto as possible in a simple web page, especially if it also worked in Explorer. gnusto.org would be a good place for this. (Mentally, I call this idea "blue Gnusto" as opposed to the "red Gnusto" which lives in Mozilla-- red is the colour of Mozilla, and browsers are blue for me (something to do with hyperlinks).) This would be an easy way into Gnusto-- like Knoppix is for Linux. What do you think? (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 4th, 2004
1:53 pm [marnanel]	The apparent save problem in z4 seems to be a compiler bug I now know what the problem with the save test in z4 is. I believe it's not our problem at all, but a bug in Inform. ZMSD §15 says that read is NOT a store instruction in z3 or z4, only in z5. This is in accord with Infocom's usage, certainly in Trinity. But Inform appears to believe that it IS a store instruction. From Inform's asm.c:     /* Opcodes introduced in Version 4 */ /* 68 */ {(uchar *) "call_2s",         4, 0, -1, 0x19, St, CALL, 0, TWO }, /* 69 */ {(uchar *) "call_vs",         4, 0, -1, 0x20, St, CALL, 0, VAR },             /* This is the version of "read" called "aread" internally: */ /* 70 */ {(uchar *) "read",            4, 0, -1, 0x24, St, 0, 0, VAR }, This means that @read instructions will have an extra byte at the end, which compliant interpreters will read as an opcode, causing just about anything to happen, really. That explains why txd crashes on our z4 test programs. Could someone confirm this on their own copy of Inform and check I'm not talking nonsense here? If this is true, I'll just have to test @save by fixing my copy of Inform and recompiling (which will be trivial). We'll have to ship without z4 tests, I suppose. I've wasted almost a week on tracking this down. :/ Current Mood: annoyed (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2004
5:05 pm [marnanel]	Current problem with Gnusto Tests: simplerestorez3 passes simplerestorez4 fails simplerestorez5 passes However, it's not just that z4 is broken: trinitygnusto passes (which is a z4 game) Now testing with golden and copper trails. (1 Comment |Comment on this)