Is There a Distinction Between "Take All From" and "Take"?

Authoring Inform 7
1

I’m in the process of writing up some class exercises along with a test suite and I noticed something that may or may not be odd. Consider this source:

"Learning Inform" by Jeff Nyman

The Learning Lab is a room.

The Office is a room.
It is east of the Learning Lab.

A shredder is in the office.

A bag of buns is in the Learning Lab.
Some lighter fluid is in the Learning Lab.

A grill is in the Learning Lab.
On the grill are a steak and a hot dog.

An ice chest is in the Learning Lab.
A bottle of coke is in the ice chest.
A bottle of juice is in the ice chest.

Instead of taking something: say "Instead rule blocks taking something."
Instead of taking something which is on the grill: say "Instead rule blocks taking something from the grill."
Instead of taking something which is in the ice chest: say "Instead rule blocks taking something from the ice chest."

Instead of taking the bag of buns: say "Instead rule blocks taking the bag of buns."
Instead of doing something other than taking with the bag of buns: say "Instead rule blocks doing anything with the buns except taking."

Instead of doing something other than taking: say "Instead rule blocks doing something other than taking."

Test me with "look at bag of buns / take the bag of buns / take the lighter fluid / take the steak / take the hot dog / take all from the ice chest".

Here is the output:

Notice the output from action [6]. That is being impacted by this rule:

Instead of doing something other than taking: say “Instead rule blocks doing something other than taking.”

That would seem to imply that “take all from” acts differently than “take” since the text shows that the “doing something other than taking” rule is being fired. I say that because if it were otherwise, I would have expected this rule to have fired:

Instead of taking something which is in the ice chest: say “Instead rule blocks taking something from the ice chest.”

If you replace the last action in my “test me” with “take coke”, you’ll see that in fact it is the “instead of taking something which is in the ice chest” rule that fires.

Thus it seems clear from this example that “take all from” and “take” actions work differently in terms of rule specificity. If I look at the Rules Index with the above source text in place, it’s not obvious to me why this is occurring. So, as I document this exercise, I’m curious about a few things:

  1. Is this expected?
  2. Why is “take all from” treated differently than “take” in this context?
  3. Is the answer so obvious that I should be embarrassed for not spotting it myself?
2

The action for taking something from a container is actually “removing it from” (probably because it requires two nouns and taking has only one, so it can’t be the same action).

An easy way to check for which action a command translates to is using the ACTIONS debugging command:

3

Ah, indeed so! So the answer to my (3) was: “Yes.”

Thank you. I will be adding these specifics to the course material. This is actually a good way to introduce the ACTIONS command as well.

4

…but remember that every removing it from action will usually be converted into a taking action (not in your case though, because the Instead rule stopped it prematurely). So you don’t need to think about that action too much normally.