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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: [INFORM] Menu-driven conversation, take 2
Message-ID: <GBL0Iw.BsK@world.std.com>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 15:04:07 GMT
References: <9aujp6$96d$1@news.lth.se> <9av0uu$c59$2@news.lth.se> <slrn9d6456.3m.cerutti@fiad06.norwich.edu> <9av61a$ddn$1@news.lth.se>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
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Xref: news.duke.edu rec.arts.int-fiction:85399

In article <9av61a$ddn$1@news.lth.se>, Magnus Olsson <mol@pobox.com> wrote:
>That is, the commands to switch between "command mode" and
>"conversation mode" would be metacommands that didn't affect the game
>state (in the sense of "state of the actual game", not the program
>state, because that would of course change).
[snip]
>Taking inventory instead of speaking, and then saying something, would
>still take only one game turn; you'd only have to enter three commands
>instead of one.

It seems to me what you really want is for terps to support displaying
the status line at the bottom of the screen, then use the status line
for command input always, like in My Angel, because I think it would
be a lot more useable with the prompt at the same end as what you're
reading.  This is the same as what you describe but there's no need
to switch modes to enter commands.  The terps would have to do more work
to support the resizing input window, though.  So in terms of what you
can actually do right now, ugh.

SeanB
