Problem with Disambiguation Control/pronoun "her"?

I’m using Jon Ingold’s Disambiguation Control extension and it seems to freak out over the use of the pronoun “her”.

I created a new sample game to test this:

[code]“Test” by “CAR”

Home is a room. Mom is a woman in home. Dad is a man in home.

Include Disambiguation Control by Jon Ingold.[/code]

and here is a transcript from that game:

So “him” works as expected, but not only does the game not understand “her” correctly, it also doesn’t accept the player’s answer to “Whom do you want to ask?”!

Anyone know why this is happening or how to alter it? I tried looking at the extension code, but the Inform 6 is over my head.

I’m away from home and can’t make a thorough check, but I do know that Graham recently made a change in parsing to improve parsing of the possessive pronoun “her”. This was following a thread on this board which may also be worth looking at.

I’m not sure of the actual reason for the problem, but I thought I’d throw out a possible culprit.

Hmm. Yeah, it’s possible that it’s related to that, but this particular issue is definitely related to the Disambiguation Control extension somehow – if I don’t include the extension, then the sample game interprets “ask her about foo” as asking Mom (as expected).

The fact that the parser doesn’t accept the player’s clarification is the bigger issue for me. I wouldn’t mind

But as is the player has to retype the whole “ask mom about foo”, which is confusing for them and breaks immersion. I am thinking this may be a bug in Disambiguation Control, but am not sure.

True, I’m not suggesting the error should be attributed to core Inform. But since Disambiguation Control was last changed in June, while Graham made the change in October, I now wonder whether that change somehow affected the way Disambiguation Control does its magic.

Sadly, however, I’m still not nearly skilled enough at I6 to even begin tracing the problem myself. :frowning:

Hey there -

I’ve got to be honest: this is a bug in DC, and it’s one I’ve had reported a while ago, but I’m not sure how to resolve.

I’ll try and take another look at it this weekend and see if I can’t crack it, but it’s a tricky one!

cheers
jon

Ah, good to know!

I am sure it is tricky indeed. If you can’t figure out the “her” thing, a workaround so that the parser at least explains the player’s clarification would be great if possible.

Thanks for taking a look at this and for providing this extension!

Ah, okay: so it turns out the standard parser actually has a check in to stop this problem; so I’ve lifted it into the DC process. It’s not a very nice solution, but it seems to work - nothing’s broken on the standard tests and “her” is now working properly.

I’ll submit the updated version to the Extensions site, but until it goes up, you can grab it from here.

archimedes.plus.com//public/ … ontrol.i7x

cheers
jon

nabs DC

Awesome work. Now I’m going to step up my pace in learning I6, mainly, I think, to give something back to all you awesome engines of creation.

Awesome! Thanks so much!