This is a collection of examples and documentation. The documentation hopes to make up to some degree for the lack of an Inform reference manual.

Chapter 1: Line Breaks and Paragraph Breaks

Controlling Inform 7's line breaks is a well-known headache, and this is largely due to poor documentation, along with the compiler's ineffective attempts to guess what the game writer wanted. This documentation should give you enough power to defeat it, though.

Inform 7 has two separate and largely-independent systems for generating line breaks: the paragraph break system and the line break system.

Section 1.1: The Line Break System

(A) The line break system is supposed to generate a single newline, without any blank lines. The line break system is extremely rigid. Things you need to know about it:

(1) The clean way to invoke it is "[line break]".

(2) Every time you invoke

say "Something with a period just before a closing quote."; Inform 7 will add an implicit.

(3) Nearly every time you invoke

say "Something with a period just before a left bracket.[if true] This one too.[end if]"; Inform 7 will add an implicit just before the left bracket.

(4) These can be suppressed with explicit:

say "Something with a period.[no line break][if true] This one too.[no line break][end if]";

(5) These can also be suppressed by adding a space after the period, since it only checks if the period is *immediately* before the close quote or left bracket.

(6) The same happens with question marks or exclamation points.

(7) Under the hood, what happens is that the left bracket usually breaks the text into multiple "blocks", each of which effectively gets its own say statement. (But not always; the left bracket in "[no line break]" doesn't create extra "blocks", for example.)

(8) This implicit line break only happens in the direct, immediate argument to a say statement. You can avoid it reliably by assembling text in a "to decide what text is" routine:

to decide what text is the magic invocation:
     decide on "Abracadabra!"; This will not generate any line breaks at all when you write
say "[magic invocation]";

Section 1.2: The Paragraph Break System

The paragraph break system is designed to generate a full blank line between paragraphs. Things you need to know about it:

(1) The paragraph break system works by producing one extra newline. So it only works as intended if the paragraph break comes *immediately after a line break*. Otherwise it'll end up being a single newline rather than a blank line. So you must be careful to emit a line break before your paragraph division point.

(2) Unlike the line break which is emitted immediately, the paragaph break is delayed and admitted just *before* the next rule (such as printing the prompt). Furthermore, it is typically only emitted before a rule of the sort which would emit a paragraph break, not the other sort. This can lead to great confusion.

(3) The paragraph break system is documented in Internal/I6T/Printing.i6t. Not the most convenient location, but there is actually complete documentation there. Search the file for "paragraph break", and read it.

(4) Every action rule (but not activities rules) generates an implicit paragraph break at the end. To suppress the implicit paragraph break, the action rule must say

"[run paragraph on]"; as the very last say-statement in the rule.

(5) In fact, every rulebook can be followed either with or without implicit paragraph breaks, in a manner which requires fancy I6 hacking. Search "Internal/Extensions/Graham Nelson/Standard Rules.i7x" for "FollowRulebook" for more information.

(6) By default, all action-based or nothing-based rulebooks, including those you write and all activities, will add the implicit paragraph break.

(7) By default, all number-based, object-based, scene-based (etc.) rulebooks will NOT add implicit paragraph breaks.

Section 1.3: Recommendations

(A) Preventing unwanted single line breaks.

(1) If you're assembling a line from individual words or sentences, from little pieces, use "to decide what text is ____", which avoids all the implicit line breaks. (2) Then use one say statement per intended output line. (3) If you have to use multiple say statements for stuff you want on one line (perhaps because they are generated by multiple rules): (3A) terminate them all with spaces. The extra space before the final line break is usually invisible, though it may occasionally confuse interpreter word-wrap. (3B) keep track of whether you said anything at all (to avoid an extra line break if you said nothing); (3C) have a bit at the very end which does something like:

if something was printed, say "[line break]"; (4) This is a decent use of an activity (or another object-based or value-based rulebook).

(B) Preventing unwanted double line breaks.

(1) Generate an entire paragraph in one action rule. (2) If you need multiple rules for one paragraph, set up an activity, or another object-based or value-based rulebook, to do so, and invoke it from one action rule. (3) If you have to use multiple action rules, have each one produce a line, and end every one with:

say "[run paragraph on with special look spacing]"; and have one special rule which runs last and does not have that line -- this rule, by its existence, triggers the paragraph break. You may want to try putting one of these lines into it, but they could mess up your text spacing:
say "[paragraph break]";
say "[conditional paragraph break]"; (4) Unlike in the line break case, Inform is supposed to keep track of blanks here.

(C) Preventing unwanted triple line breaks.

(1) These are almost always due to "blanks": sets of rules which were supposed to produce text which produced nothing, but issued a paragraph break (often explicitly).

(D) Making sure double line breaks happen where desired

(1) Make sure the last say statement before any paragraph break emits a line break. (2) Make sure that every paragraph-generating machinery ends with a conditional paragraph break.

(E) Making sure single line breaks happen where desired

(1) Make sure there *isn't* a paragraph break. (2) Make sure there *is* a line break. (3) You can get a single line break from a paragraph break without a line break, but this is undesirable and always a bug.

Section 1.4: Changelog

6.0.220604: Formatting fixes.
6.0.220522: First version for Inform 10.1. Increment major version to deal with a version number SNAFU.

Section 1.5: The Cookbook Proper

Here is the main Cookbook.

A	Example Line Breaks Understand when Inform implicitly emits line breaks

B	Example Careful Startup displaying messages at the right time during startup

C	Example Mention Unmention controlling whether something is mentioned

D	Example Examine Room putting the room in scope

E	Example Meeting Place using arbitrary binary relations

F	Example Confusion polite responses for failed commands to actors

G	Example Early Command Parsing process certain commands specially