Hi! After translating the standard library in Italian, I’m developing a parser that takes sentences in “controlled italian” and translates them in Dialog source code.
For example:
the sentence “la mela è un oggetto commestibile nella scatola” (that is: “the apple is an edible thing in the box”)
becomes: #mela
(item *)
(edibile *)
( * is #in#scatola)
Awesome, kind of like what Inform 7 is to Inform 6 in a way. Very interesting, the same approach should be possible for English, of course (Inform 7 has shown pseudo-natural English coding for IF is possible after all), but also might open up Dialog to other languages (my pet project a while back was translating Dialog into Japanese, but I ran into issues; maybe this is a better approach for Japanese IF authoring?).
Well, I’m trying this approach because in Inform7 6L* there was support for other languages also in source code (with a syntax similar to the one I use in “Dialogo”) but in 6M62 it’s not available any more. After years waiting for a new release of Inform7, I discovered Dialog that is very interesting. Something like Dialogo in English may be not useful since there is already Inform7.
Leonardo, because the source are around, I think is a good step ahead, but I prefer using separate NL and story content language… this help in a visual checking of what is what (in IF development, code and assets are intertwined)
I’m curious if you will give a NL “translation” of I7, when the OS sources will be finally released (for me the ideal IF NL environment is Italian NL for english-language WIP and english NL for italian-language WIP)
So, I’ll watch the developments of your initiative. Avanti così !
Saluti,/best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.