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From: by723@torfree.net (Kent Tessman)
Subject: Re: Hugo vs. TADS/Inform
Message-ID: <Dy9nr0.JnA.0.sheppard@torfree.net>
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Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 02:18:35 GMT
Lines: 39

Dan Shiovitz (scythe@u.washington.edu) wrote:

: One advantage Hugo might have (pure speculation .. I use TADS m'self)
: is, if the plurals handling is indeed coded in Hugo, not hard-coded like
: TADS's is, then you could conceivably modify which items "boxes" refers
: to, depending on the situation.  Another thing Hugo might offer is the
: ability to do something like this, which can't be done in TADS, AFAIK:

: >EXAMINE BOXES
: There's a whole bunch of boxes here, all shapes and sizes.  Ok, actually
: there's just two.

: >GET BOXES
: red box: Taken.
: blue box: Taken.

: (that is, to have an item "boxes" to give a description of the group, as
: well as being able to manipulate individual members.)
:
: --
: dan shiovitz scythe@u.washington.edu shiov@cs.washington.edu


This is true.  The default reaction for a plural/identical object or 
group of objects is modifiable (and will become more so) through the 
object library.

One reason I got so into coding the plural/identical objects skeleton was 
because even I was impressed with the flexibility of non-hard-wired 
parsing capable.  The parser is coded into the engine (the basic parser, 
anyway) for reasons of speed, efficiency, and neatness.  It would be 
possible to rewrite all or part of the parser as a front-end if the need 
ever arose--with less or more difficulty, of course, depending on how 
gymnastic the parsing was to get.

--Kent



