Editing Interactive fiction (section)

===Interpreters and virtual machines===
[[Interpreter (computing)|Interpreters]] are the software used to play the works of interactive fiction created with a development system. Since they need to interact with the player, the "story files" created by development systems are programs in their own right. Rather than running directly on any one computer, they are programs run by Interpreters, or virtual machines, which are designed specially for IF. They may be part of the development system, or can be compiled together with the work of fiction as a standalone [[executable file]].

The Z-machine was designed by the founders of [[Infocom]], in 1979. They were influenced by the then-new idea of a [[P-machine|virtual Pascal computer]], but replaced P with Z for Zork, the celebrated adventure game of 1977–79. The Z-machine evolved during the 1980s but over 30 years later, it remains in use essentially unchanged. Glulx was designed by Andrew Plotkin in the late 1990s as a new-generation IF virtual machine. It overcomes the technical constraint on the Z-machine by being a 32-bit rather than 16-bit processor. [[Frotz]] is a modern Z-machine interpreter originally written in [[C (programming language)]] by Stefan Jokisch in 1995 for [[DOS]]. Over time it was ported to other platforms, such as Unix, RISC OS, Mac OS and most recently iOS. Modern Glulx interpreters are based on "Glulxe", by Andrew Plotkin, and "Git", by Iain Merrick. Other interpreters include Zoom for Mac OS X, or for Unix or Linux, maintained by Andrew Hunter, and Spatterlight for Mac OS X, maintained by Tor Andersson.