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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: [Inform FAQ] Calling all newbies!
Message-ID: <GFJGr3.FqA@world.std.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 13:13:50 GMT
References: <tj79elfjgsvj4a@xo.supernews.co.uk> <slrn9jeet6.75.cerutti@fiad06.norwich.edu> <9h9d2k$cm1nu$1@ID-62041.news.dfncis.de>
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Roger Firth posted:
>I'm in the middle of putting together a FAQ covering common
>problems when starting as an Inform programmer (you know the
>sort of thing: why using modules is A Bad Idea, and so on), and
>I'm looking for suggestions on topics to include.

This isn't an initial stumbling block, but it's something that
comes up again and again, and is trivial to get wrong and never know:

  Some interpreters don't support the "automatic 'a/an'"
  handling. If an object needs "an" instead of "a", always
  add an explicit 'article "an"' property, instead of relying
  on the library, which secretly relies on the interpreter.

Personally I wish we could just take *out* the handling of
this in the Inform library, so authors would catch this bug
themselves, instead of it being caught by the beta-testers
or worse yet the players. (I believe I saw somebody's source
code using a library modified in this way--probably Zarf.)

SeanB
