Common Commands Sidebar extension

[Skylark]

Ok, that seems easy enough, thanks a lot! Can you tell me how to refresh it?

[bg]

You can use the phrase “refresh the sidebar” inside a rule, e.g.

Every turn: refresh the sidebar.

[Skylark]

Oh, thanks a lot!

[bg]

Here’s a rough version that also allows you to use phrases to change individual commands. I’ll probably seek out some testers for this aspect of it after the holidays.

EDIT: Removed file as this is no longer the most recent version.

[Skylark]

I’ve just found a bit of a bug. Can anyone help? When you use this with the hyperlink extension the game sometimes grinds to a halt and takes you to the inventory instead. I don’t know why.

[bg]

@Skylark

I’ve just found a bit of a bug. Can anyone help? When you use this with the hyperlink extension the game sometimes grinds to a halt and takes you to the inventory instead. I don’t know why.

Sorry, I don’t have a lot of time to devote to this at the moment, but here are a few ideas that come to mind:

• Turn rules listing on with the RULES command, then take whatever steps led to the bug so you can figure out which rule is causing it.

• Flexible Windows (which is included by Common Commands Sidebar) has the ability to do hyperlinks, so you could check the code of the Flexible Windows extension to see if there are any comments about how it interacts with other hyperlink extensions. You can also check the Flexible Windows documentation to see what it says about hyperlinks. The latest version of FW doesn’t have documentation, but you could look for the most recent version that does, maybe on the Inform website.

I hope that helps!

[Skylark]

Thanks! I’m wondering, though, all the commands that keep triggering accidentally are actually hyperlinks on the sidebar itself! Could that be doing it?

[Eleas (Björn Paulsen)]

@Skylark

Thanks! I’m wondering, though, all the commands that keep triggering accidentally are actually hyperlinks on the sidebar itself! Could that be doing it?

There’s a standard heuristic for reporting bugs that may be helpful here: try to create a working source example (as a separate project) with as few lines of code as possible that still reproduces the problem you have. Unless it’s a compilation error, add a test phrase at the bottom of the source that demonstrates the error. To wit, and borrowing from bug 0001765 with thanks to Matt Weiner, it’d look something like this:

[code]Lab is a room.
Alice is a woman in Lab.

Instead of asking someone about when the topic understood matches “[number]”:
say “[The noun] says, ‘Go higher. Try [number understood plus 10].’”

Instead of asking someone about:
say “[The noun] says ‘[Topic understood], huh?’”

test me with “ask Alice about 5/ask alice about rocks/ask alice about 5 rocks”.[/code]

Do that, and I suspect you’ll get much quicker response to the problem.

[bg]

@Eleas

@Skylark

Thanks! I’m wondering, though, all the commands that keep triggering accidentally are actually hyperlinks on the sidebar itself! Could that be doing it?

There’s a standard heuristic for reporting bugs that may be helpful here: try to create a working source example (as a separate project) with as few lines of code as possible that still reproduces the problem you have. Unless it’s a compilation error, add a test phrase at the bottom of the source that demonstrates the error.

Thanks, Eleas. Skylark, if you could post some simple example code that reproduces the problem, and/or post the transcript of what happens when rules listing is turned on (and maybe actions listing as well), that’d give me a better idea of what’s going on.

[bg]

Here is a more cleaned-up version of the extension that has the ability to show and hide commands with phrases. If anyone wants to test or review the code, please go ahead. After it’s been tested I’ll put it on github.

EDIT: Most recent version available at Github.