:: Spock eyebrow ::  "Fascinating."

I poked around with it and this what struck me at first:

--------

The documentation says "you / your" instead of "we / our".

Typo:  I think you meant "tchotchke".  Lovely word choice, though!

----

So, when puzzles require other puzzles to be solved, I enter:
        X requires Y, Z.
But when a puzzle requires the actual steps to be taken, I enter:
        write A to X; write B to X;

Is that right?  It is possible in Inform to put stored actions in a
table, so why aren't we doing it that way?

Table of Stuff
step                                    puzzle
a stored action                 a thing
dropping the cloak              Hanging-The-Cloak

Either way, if you -must- use a To phrase, I'm pretty you can still
use "requires" instead of "write".  Inform will know the difference
between the To phrase and the Relation because the To phrase appears
in imperative code only, where the Relation would have a "now/change"
in front of it.

But seriously, use the table if at all possible. All the verbiage is
scary.

(SNAFU: In the above example, I think that "cloak" needs to be defined
as an object -before- its line in the table appears, so if you were
having problems with compiler errors, that may be because the Table
wasn't at the end of the source.)

----------------

So SUGGEST actually -does- the suggestion instead of just printing
it?  This seems wrong, unless you call the command SOLVE.  Especially
since it prevents SUGGEST from being out-of-world.   I recommend
keeping SUGGEST out of world, but go ahead and let it fill-in a stored-
action variable for what it would have done.  Then the author can
print it prettily in dialogue or execute it as she sees fit.  I don't
even think this extension should by default print the action at all;
let the author do that in a After/Report Suggesting rule.

(I think you can make a Last Report Suggesting rule, but perhaps say:
The Report Suggesting rules have default success.
So if the author makes her own, your default one will silence itself
automatically. I think.)

----
Should fake-action really have an Understand clause?  Why would any
player need to type it?

----

I don't suppose Eric Eve's Implicit Actions extension would be of any
help here?  Especially since you can now replace Sections of it with
Inform's new ability.

-----

This example seems silly:

A task processing rule: if The Bar is visited, now Noticing-Dark-Room
is complete.

I say that because how is it possible for a task or puzzle to have a
stated venue that also -must- be -un-visited?  If the venue isn't
important so that the task or puzzle can be completed while the venue
is still unvisited, then why are we stating a venue at all?

-------
Also, things of this nature:

A task processing rule: if cloak is hung, now Hanging-The-Cloak is
complete; otherwise now Hanging-The-Cloak is incomplete.

A lot of these task processing rules seem to cry out to be a
Definition rule instead:

Definition: Hanging-The-Cloak is complete: decide on whether or not
the cloak is hung.

And the extension can define "incomplete" for all puzzles so the
author never need to:

Definition: a puzzle is incomplete: if it is complete, decide no; else
decide yes.

This route seems easier and much less verbose for the author, and
saves runtime speed as well.
-------------

Re: the command sequence:

What use is "TAKE ALL" or "TAKE ALL BUT" or such commands in a puzzle
solution, since they are merely abbreviated forms of other commands?
I know of no solution that would require TAKE ALL but not accept the
individual TAKE commands.  Am I missing a case here?

-------

I have issue with the concept of keying the extension on a list of
Actions that must be done instead of conditions that must become
true.  For example, Attacking the Medusa shouldn't be there; "the
Medusa is dead" should be.  The difference is because there may
(should) be other ways of killing the Medusa than by Attacking.  In
this particular case SHOW MIRROR TO would get the job done.

The only reason I see this extension requiring actual Actions to be
named is so it has something concrete to suggest to the player.  But I
don't like that it *requires* that particular action in order to
checkmark the Task "Done".

Am I missing some technicality here?

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I'm gonna stop here until I learn more.
-Ron