Another monthly report! Notably, this month was mostly about unclear documentation, the failings of UserVoice as a useful system, and a couple of issues which make more sense on an abstract, conjectural level than they do on the practical level, i.e., people actually using and mastering them.
[rant]Another month, another report! Incidently, your recent post about immigration was very interesting, thank you again for sharing. Cheers!
https://intfiction.org/t/if-archive-hugo-downloads/59/1
This is about the order of evaluation (the sort of thing you use parenthesis to avoid nightmares about). matt w didn’t have enough points for UserVoice (which seems to be a common complaint, undermining UserVoice’s utility I guess), so he points out in the thread that the documentation could at least be made clearer. This is supported by other users, as people seem to be struggling to follow the logic behind the “usual conventions” - as Juhana says, simply put, “The usual convention isn’t clearly defined.”.
The issue is, of course, in phrase evaluations. Arithmetic evaluations seem to function as expected.
https://intfiction.org/t/a-an-before-vowels/9762/1
This one went a bit over my head. During some optimising of text generation (specifically making it so that it would correctly produce a/an when applicable) matt w started running against some problems. One of them was filed as a bug, but I’m unsure that that covers the whole thing.
I can’t sum this one up, sorry. If you could take a look for yourself it’d be much appreciated.
https://intfiction.org/t/a-an-before-vowels/9762/1
There are some issues that go beyond the bug report as well–there’s the weird spacing, and whatever the effects of preloading the text substitution were, and, well, just in general I’d like to know how indefinite articles work. The bug report is mostly about the issue two posts up from that, I think.
https://intfiction.org/t/understanding-things-via-their-number-based-properties/10158/1
“Item described” = “self in I6”. This is still confusing (zarf to call it “messy”, which is certainly an alarm bell ringing), and many feel would benefit from at least clearer documentation.
https://intfiction.org/t/looking-up-table-values/10164/1
Another bit in the documentation that could be made clearer. Nothing major, though.
https://intfiction.org/t/stopping-a-timed-event/10183/6
https://intfiction.org/t/right-time-right-place/10084/1
These two cover the same area: having a command that’ll stop a timed event. One of the posts even has code that will do that.
I’m reporting these because to have the same issue brought up twice in a month (and for someone to actually code a hack to make it happen) means that there is some interest in the user’s practical side. I understand the reasoning for the way it works, but in practical terms, people seem to want/need it.
One of the threads also covers the UserVoice issue I brought up earlier, where it might be falling short of its utility.
https://intfiction.org/t/getting-rid-of-a-random-x-for-only-one-object/10191/1
This is on uservoice, but there’s clearly interest: this is an active discussion on how best to rework a phrase that’s sometimes confusing. As Draconis says, On Uservoice there’s been the suggestion to change the phrasing “a random hat worn by the player” when the author knows there can be only one: instead, “the hat worn by the player” is more readable, and could make more efficient code (why loop through all hats if you don’t need to?).
Really active discussion there, so it’s like with the timed event thing: even though it works the way it is and there’s a reason behind it, people are struggling and actively trying to change the behaviour. Might be worth taking a look at, therefore.[/rant]
EDIT - Bleh, I left something in there that shouldn’t be. 
matt w, I’m sure you’ll recognise a little non-sequitur because you PMd it to me! Copy-pasting…