§25.23. 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.
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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:
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: |
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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:
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: 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:
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: |