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Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2001 17:00:50 -0400
From: John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com>
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Subject: Re: What can't be done in Inform?
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Daniel Dawson wrote:

> Greetings everyone. I hope you don't mind me jumping in here.

I don't, but then I'm going to go and do the same thing...


> You pick up and read article <5u52qt8d4pkipo8h7o1v36839kcsrcp42b@4ax.com>,
> written by Gadget <gadget@SPAMBLOCKhaha.demon.nl>. It says:
> >> take all from the bookcase except the feather and the ball
> >You can't use multiple objects with that verb.
> >> drop the gold bar and the screwdriver and go east
> >You can't use multiple objects with that verb.
> >The level 9 parser could handle these things. Inform cannot.
> True, but interestingly enough, Infocom's parser can also understand both of
> those. I think that this is just a matter of recognizing 'and' as being
> potentially equivalent to 'then' et al. I don't think that doing so would be
> very difficult,

Actually, someone posted a hacked-together patch a while ago to do just that.
The sample game then used the command "get (something-I-don't-remember) and
duck."  Yes, there was a duck.


> but there was probably some reason or other for not doing so.
> I'll let gnelson speak for himself there.

I'd wager it just wasn't on the "critical path," as they say.  The code change
was small, as I remember, but not very pleasant to look at.


