Message-ID: <3A840186.853AD4C6@csi.com>
Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2001 09:41:11 -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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Magnus Olsson wrote:

> In article <3A82AD21.D260DDD0@csi.com>,
> John Colagioia  <JColagioia@csi.com> wrote:
> >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.
> But that's a late-time corruption! :-)

(Feels kind of weird to go back to thinking of Infocom as "the new guys"...)

Maybe, but it comes from the most successful of the creators.


> The help texts for the Inform port of Advent says the following:
>
> > I know of places, actions, and things. You can guide me using
> >commands that are complete sentences. To move, try commands like
> >"enter," "east," "west," "north," "south," "up," "down," "enter
> >building," "climb pole," etc.
>
> (and I think this help text is taken from the original FORTRAN
> version).
>
> This suggests that Crowther thought of the commands as commands
> (for which the natural mood is the imperative) rather than wshes
> or intentions.

I really want to say something cleverly snide about FORTRAN programmers
(which I still do on occasion, before anyone gets offended), but I'm drawing
a blank.  Insert your own punchline about the literary skills of FORTRAN
programmers here.

But, yes, point taken.  It is one more perspective.


> What I think all this boils down to is if you're used to giving
> commands to a computer via a command-line interface. In that case,
> it's very natural to think of the player-adventure game interaction as
> commands directed at the parser (never mind that this is more than a
> little bit schizophrenic if you think about it).

Interestingly, I never saw this model as strange or schizophrenic, but that
may just say something about me...


> And the parser in
> Advent seems to take on a life of its own, like the
> omniscient-narrator-with-a-personality in old novels. ("Do you want me
> to resurrect you? Sorry, I'm out of orange smoke.")
>
> On the other hand, for people who aren't familiar with a command-line
> interface (in Infocom's days, the people who weren't computer
> literate; nowadays, almost everyone who isn't a programmer, and some
> programmers as well), the idea of typing commands at the game may seem
> unnatural.  Perhaps the "I want to..." formula was initially a way of
> making the command syntax seem more natural.

It may also have been a nod to many English-as-a-second-language players,
who tend to (at least, in my experience) be excessively polite, and will ask
for help with an "if you please, I would very much like you to..." sort of a
question.


> >> 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.
>
> And it's the same in Swedish.

Good to know.


> >The
> >interpretation, I guess, is a matter of "politesse," if you will...
>
> I think it's more a matter of which metaphor you're using for the UI.
>
> >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.
>
> What would be really interesting is to see if they had planned
> to go to the trouble of introducing a non-orthogonality in the
> parser when handling orders to NPC's. Of course, in German you
> can express orders in the infinitive - "Achtung! Einsteigen!"
> ("Attention! Embark!").

That, would, yes.


