User:Thijshijsijsjss/Human Parser/About Breaking Down

PARSER > I don't understand the word `alexithymia'.

YOU    > Panic.

PARSER > Your score has just gone down by one spoon.

This example is inspired by Learning ZIL (1989), an instruction manual to the Zork Implementation Language that calls parsers 'a notorious part of every IF program'. Inspired by Adventure, Zork was released in 1977 by Infocom and was massively influential in bringing text-adventures to the emerging scene of home computers. This was done by way of a custom interpreter to the Zork Implementation Language, the Z-machine, that enabled ZIL games to be played on any machine by just writing Z-machine implementation for that machine (Blank, Galley, 1980).

However, an official compiler that compiles ZIL into Z-machine instructions has never been released. And after company reorganization at Infocom, ZIL was declared `functionally dead' (citation tbd). The ZIL manual's subtitle aptly reads: `Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Writing Interactive Fiction But Couldn't Find Anyone Still Working Here to Ask'.

To this day, there is a community around writing for Z-machines, decompiling them and writing new interpreters. How curious it is that after almost 50 years, it's humans parsing the computer.

References

• Infocom (1989) Learning ZIL. [Coding documentation]
• Blank, M.S., Galley, S.W. (1980). 'How to Fit a Large Program Into a Small Machine or How to fit the Great Underground Empire on your desk-top'. Creative Computing, 1980, p. 80–87.
• Computer Gaming World (1989) ‘Infocom's West Coast Move Stirs Controversy’, Computer Gaming World, Issue 63, p. 10. Available at: https://archive.org/details/Computer_Gaming_World_Issue_63 (Accessed: 29 April 2025).