For this post, I'm going to steal an excellent idea Emily Short had and answer a question Jeremiah McCall, a historian who maintains Gaming the Past, asked me over email with a blog post. He wrote:
Since [the story format] Harlowe is the default [in Twine 2], I am using Harlowe and I understand that SugarCube [another story format bundled with Twine 2] is a bridge from Twine 1.x. I have scoured the net for a description of the strengths of Harlowe and why it is now default, but I don't seem to be able to find anything. The few comparisons of Harlowe and SugarCube seem to favor the latter -- though here and there are comments that Harlowe is more robust. I'm guessing (and hoping) that Harlowe will continue to develop and continue to be the default, but am I right in that? There seems to be a fair amount of resistance. Since I'm teaching Harlowe to others in hopes they will continue to use it, I'd be grateful for a quick insight. Right now I am under the vague impression that you and Mr. Arnott intend for Harlowe to be the standard from here on. Is that true and is there a quick reason why?
A quick explanation: a story format is essentially a runtime engine for works built in Twine. It takes the passages created in Twine and displays them in a Web browser. I intended the name 'story format' to a bit friendlier than 'engine,' and formats in Twine 1 were indeed more about formatting than behavior. In Twine 2, the situation has become a bit more complex, and thus the term 'story format' a bit dicier. Instead of choosing colors and whether clicking a link causes the story to expand or instead replace the existing text with new text, changing story formats in Twine 2 changes the entire approach an author takes to interactivity.
There are three story formats bundled with Twine 2. People tend to think of Twine and its story formats as a monolithic development effort, but that isn't the case -- each one is developed by different people on a volunteer basis. The formats are:
- SugarCube, maintained by Thomas Michael Edwards. As Jeremiah alludes to, this is also available for Twine 1, is very mature, and has a ton of documentation, official and otherwise.
- Harlowe, maintained by Leon Arnott. In my opinion, it's a daring re-imagining of how to add interactivity to text that leverages a generous spoonful of functional programming. It's a lot younger than SugarCube, which means that there isn't as much documentation on how to do stuff with it.
- Snowman, maintained by me. It does the absolute minimum in terms of functionality, instead leaving that to the stalwart libraries jQuery and Underscore. It's great if you already know JavaScript and CSS, or are interested in learning them. If you aren't, it's a terrible choice.
(By the way, anyone can create a story format for Twine, and adding one is as easy as copying and pasting a URL. I really enjoy Illume, for example, when proofing work.)
Anyway, Harlowe is the default story format in Twine 2. I decided to make it the default for Twine 2 not only because I had, and continue to have confidence in Leon's skills and vision, but I also saw Twine 2 as a chance to re-examine the assumptions Twine 1 made.
There are two things in particular that I think Harlowe gets right:
- It's succinct and readable. I think Leon has worked out a very simple syntax for code that doesn't interfere with the flow of reading passage text.
- It allows you to separate code from text. Harlowe allows you to mark a section of text as a "hook" which then can have code applied to it. This means that you can keep text and code compartmentalized -- which I find really handy, because the mindset I bring to writing and editing prose is vastly different from the one I bring to code.
Harlowe may be the default, but in my opinion, it's not a standard. I say that because there is no standard. I realize this makes Twine a little bit confusing; a system like Undum has a distinct, singular look and feel. But right now, I think the compromise is worth it. SugarCube, Harlowe, and Snowman serve different audiences, which means that Twine as a whole can be useful to that many more people.