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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform] Parsing Ambiguity???
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Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 19:45:25 GMT
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Paul Harker (PaulHarker@gnn.com) wrote:
> I've started my first experimental foray into Inform, and have come up with 
> something I don't quite understand. I have defined a car and it's door as two 
> separate objects.

[From your example, you mean the car and its *window* are separate objects?]

The answer, at this point, is "don't have ambiguous names." That is, if 
one object is generally called "car" (with no adjectives), don't have 
another object called "car door" or "car window". One object's name 
should never be a strict subset of another's.

It would be possible to make a more clever disambiguator, with some 
library hacking. I don't know if anyone's done it yet.

> Why do some 
> verbs parse right and other not-quite-right? And how can I correct this? 

Probably because the car door is contained inside the car. The different 
parsing tokens behave slightly differently.

Oh, you also have the window "concealed". That's probably wrong. 
Concealed objects are ones the player doesn't know about.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
