Recently I have come upon what may be the best sentence ever written on the internet, to wit
(Trust me when I say that context would only ruin it.)
My first instinct on reading it was that it would make for a damn fine line in an Inform 7 source code, but while it looks like a good example of Inform-ese, I’m not actually sure it would compile. At the very least you would have to define what exactly a “general electronics manufacturing occurrence” is, earlier in the source. What else would have to be changed?
It occurs to me that this could well be a new kind of thread: come up with an Inform-like sentence, then define its implementation. Conclude with the command in its original, unaltered form.
As for me, I’d implement it as something like this (unfortunately, as I am at work, I can’t test it):
[code]An event is a kind of thing.
A general manufacturing occurrence is a kind of event.
Event-scope relates various events to various people. The verb to happen to (it happens to, they happen to, it is happening to) implies the event-scope relation.
Catching on fire is a general electronics manufacturing occurrence that happens to anybody.[/code]
I doubt it would compile though. For one, I’m unsure whether “anybody” is valid in this context, and really the “thing” kind is a poor abstraction for modelling events.
We should do a sort of informese poetry slam. Where you have to write code that compiles, but where the point is showing off the code, not the compiled games.
Forgetting the poems, this is really simple namespacing mechanism that I would really like to see work.
Section - A
The thug is a thing.
Section - B
The thug is a thing. [Currently an error. Instead, it could create a new thing, also called 'the thug'.]
Section - C
The holding cell is a room.
The thug is in the holding cell. [Ambiguous. Which thug?]
The thug from A is in the holding cell. [Okay, that thug!]
It is(*), and your code compiles with only slight changes:
[code]X is a room.
An event is a kind of thing.
A general electronics manufacturing occurrence is a kind of event.
Event-scope relates various events to various people. The verb to happen to (it happens to, they happen to, it is happening to) implies the event-scope relation.
Catching on fire is a general electronics manufacturing occurrence that happens to anybody.[/code]
(* But it results in the event relating to two separate people, each called “the person”, so this may be a bug.)
