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Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2001 09:28:49 -0500
From: John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com>
Organization: No Conspiracy Here...
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Subject: Re: [Inform] Where is French.h?
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Daryl McCullough wrote:

> John says...
>
> >Well, the majority of documentation for IF games tends to say that
> >each command completes the sentence "I want to..."
>
> Really? I always thought of the commands to the interpreter
> as imperatives. It's as if you are a passenger in a taxicab,
> issuing directions such as: "Turn right here. Stop at the
> yellow house on the left."

I suppose that from a certain perspective, that's true, also.  It's
certainly not an invalid interpretation.

I was just pointing out that many instruction booklets.  Uhm...let's
see...Wishbringer looks like a good example:  "Wishbringer usually acts
as if your sentence begins with 'I want to...,' although you shouldn't
actually type those words."  Looks like most of the other Infocom
guides make this comment.


> I guess it's a peculiarity of English that the imperative
> is syntactically the same as the infinitive (if you ignore
> the "to"). So, either interpretation is equally good for
> the English version.

Exactly.  The text you type is identical in English.  The
interpretation, I guess, is a matter of "politesse," if you will...

Hm.  Does anybody happen to know what the German translation of Zork
was supposed to do?  That might shed some light on what Infocom
intended, at least.


