Hello, Hobbit
bsles...@gmail.com
"Hello, Hobbit" by Brian Slesinsky
Part 1 - Definitions needed to understand the Text
A hobbit is a person. A hole is a kind of room. The Hill is [for our
purposes] a room.
Residence-of relates one room to one person. The verb to live (he
lives, they live, he lived, it is lived, he is living) implies the
residence-of relation.
A nasty dirty wet hole and a dry bare sandy hole are holes. A hobbit
hole is a kind of hole.
A perfectly round door is a door.
Similar relates things to each other. The verb to be like implies the
similar relation.
A door can be painted green.
The exact middle is a kind of container. The exact middle is part of
every door.
A room can be very comfortable.
A room can be without smoke.
Panelled walls are scenery.
The floor is scenery. It can be tiled. It can be carpeted.
Fond-of relates various people to one person.
The verb to be fond of implies the fond-of relation.
A visitor is a kind of person.
A room can be winding on-and-on going fairly but not quite straight
into the side of the hill.
A person can be going up stairs.
Inside from the Hill is a perfectly round door.
Part 2 - The Text
In a hole in the ground lives a hobbit. A nasty, dirty, wet hole
contains ends of worms and an oozy smell. A dry, bare, sandy hole
contains nothing to sit down on or eat. The hole in the ground is a
hobbit hole. "That means comfort."
The perfectly round door is like a porthole. It is painted green. A
shiny yellow brass knob is in the door's exact middle. Through the
door is a tube-shaped hall. Inside from the hall is the tunnel. It is
very comfortable, without smoke. It contains panelled walls. The
floor is tiled and carpeted. Some polished chairs and lots-and-lots of
pegs for coats-and-hats are here. The hobbit is fond of visitors. The
tunnel is winding on-and-on going fairly but not quite straight into
the side of the hill (called the Hill). Many little round doors are on
both sides. The hobbit is not going up stairs. Bedrooms, bathrooms,
cellars, many pantries, wardrobes, whole rooms devoted to clothes,
kitchens, dining rooms are on the same floor. All are on the same
passage. The best rooms are on the left-hand side. They contain
deep-set round windows looking over his garden, and meadows beyond,
sloping down to the river.
bsles...@gmail.com
I try to write Java code so that it reads like English (by using
carefully-chosen method names) so I'm intrigued by being able to write
code that happens to be correct English and wanted to see how far I
could push it.
Since I7 is supposed to support natural language with excellent error
messages, at first I tried to play it like an IF game - that is, by
guessing some likely syntax and using the error messages to guide me to
what works. The error messages aren't really good enough for that;
it's not hard if you just try stuff at random to confuse I7 so that it
gives back a low-level assertion error rather than something useful.
So, back to the manual. An actual grammar would have helped a lot; I
had to resort to trial and error quite a bit.
One feature I missed was that there seems to be no way to declare a
synonym to use in the source code, so I couldn't make "a tube-shaped
hall" and "The tunnel" refer to the same room in the source.
Also, I couldn't say that the hall is like a tunnel because there's no
way to make the "Similar" relation work both between things and between
places. It would also be fine if there were a Similar-Things relation
and a Similar-Rooms relation provided I could define the same verb to
choose from them based on context, but that doesn't work either.
Also, the only way I could figure out to define "Pegs for coats and
hats" as an object name was using dashes due to the special meaning of
"and".
Strangely enough, this doesn't work:
Through the door is a tube-shaped hall. "A very comfortable
tunnel..."
It seems like the description should attach to the hall because it's
the last room mentioned, but it never showed up anywhere in the game.
I couldn't figure out where it went because the Index doesn't list
properties.
On the IDE side (on the Mac), I really missed having a back button.
Having links all over the place and no consistent way to go back after
clicking on them isn't so user-friendly. Also, there needs to be some
way to adjust the font size for the source code.
James Cunningham
<bsles...@gmail.com> said:
> On the IDE side (on the Mac), I really missed having a back button.
> Having links all over the place and no consistent way to go back after
> clicking on them isn't so user-friendly. Also, there needs to be some
> way to adjust the font size for the source code.
I agree with you on the font size thing: I rather prefer a larger size
for fonts, and that chosen for the IDE is just a wee bit smaller than
I'm comfortable with. The funny thing to me is that you *can* choose a
different font, it just doesn't do anything. I don't know if this is
planned for inclusion in the final version.
As for the "back" button, the contextual menu for the documentation
page gives you "back" and "forward" options, whihc work as one would
expect. I'd prefer buttons, but these work in a pinch.
Best,
Jaes
Daphne Brinkerhoff
> tunnel..."
>
> It seems like the description should attach to the hall because it's
> the last room mentioned, but it never showed up anywhere in the game.
> I couldn't figure out where it went because the Index doesn't list
> properties.
Ah, but the door is the "subject" of the last sentence (or at least the
first noun mentioned in it), so that description would instead attach
to the door, IIRC. You would have to say "A tube-shaped hall is
through the door" instead.
--
Daphne
bsles...@gmail.com
> first noun mentioned in it), so that description would instead attach
> to the door, IIRC. You would have to say "A tube-shaped hall is
> through the door" instead.
Well, except that the human reader understands it fine the way it is,
and in this case I was trying to be reasonably faithful to the original
text, and anyway I like "Through the door is a tube-shaped hall" better
than "A tube-shaped hall is through the door" because the sentence
structure implies someone going through the door and then looking at
what's on the other side. If we're going to write code that is
simultaneously English (which I think is a very neat idea), I'd like to
have enough options to be able to write elegant English.