For years, users and fans of the interactive fiction authoring language Inform have wanted a nice, printed version of Graham Nelson's Inform Designer's Manual. At some point, Graham whetted everybody's appetites by announcing efforts to produce a fourth edition of the manual, available both in electronic and hardcopy forms through a small press. The new edition would include new chapters, such as a history of interactive fiction, that would make it worth purchasing just to see. (Graham has proven himself a fine writer, and any fan of his IF authoring language or his IF games would get excited over the prospects of these extra chapters.) Months passed, and many gave up waiting, myself included. Indeed, the language itself wasn't getting any revisions (it didn't need any), and it seemed Graham perpetually had better things to do.

Last May, on Inform's eighth birthday and the Designer's Manual, 3rd edition's fourth, when I wasn't looking, Graham releases the fourth edition, entirely rewritten and newly expanded with the promised chapters, in electronic form (as a beautifully layed-out PDF). Attempts to deal with small presses failed, and so it was up to the community to figure out how to produce the promised hard copy. Shortly after its release, active IF community member David Cornelson (aka Jarb, manager of the Interactive Fiction Library) proposes arranging a limited print run and/or on-demand printing of the manual. I'm not used to Internet community members following through on such proposals, so it was surprising that soon after the proposal, Jarb started taking orders.

On November 23, 2001, the very day I decide to start reading rec.arts.int-fiction again after over a year's absence, Jarb closes orders. (Pardon my emphasis, but I at the time I found this ridiculously ironic given my off-again/on-again lurker relationship with this surprisingly active community.) I find this out mere minutes after I find out that it was printed in the first place, and dash off an email to Jarb begging, pleading for one of the extras. Thanks to his kindness, I finally have a copy, and am quite pleased with it. A slick cover, quality binding and great print. My only real misgiving is the lack of margins, which is obviously due to the original formatting of the PDF for 8-1/2" x 11" paper, but it's otherwise excellent.

Incidentally, the book was printed at DeHARTS.com. It's nice to know that if I ever wanted a few hundred copies of a 572-page document in a form that kind of resembles an O'Reilly book (mostly just the cover :), they'd only cost about $8 each. Also mentioned during discussions of printing options was Digitz.net, which does actual book-at-a-time printing-on-demand with a 48 hour guarantee for up to 100 books, and also offer fulfillment services (ship your book directly to a customer). Anyone have any experience with Digitz that can attest to their quality?