Issue with automatic plural (a3Lite)

Authoring TADS
1

now there’s an annoying (= hours of fighting) issue with adv3lite automatic handling of plurals (learning, pp.28-9), whose in this case cause the spewing of four rather long texts, and on top of it, in a non-consistent manner:

(sorry for the spoiler in the vocab lists, but after hours of fighting with code, I don’t have energy for coding an example case)

fground: Component 'trio of girls; diverse three radiantly saluting young 
smiling happy; girls women; them'
"[a score of lines...]"
location = somewhere

redGirl: Component 'girl in red; left raven haired raven-haired hair petite 
red dressed horned female winged; woman girl daemon demon Atuzejiki Azuj; 
it'
"[a score of lines...]"

greenGirl: Component 
'girl in green; right blonde green dressed winged angelic tall lithe female;
girl woman angel Miryarai Miyai; it'
"[a score of lines...]"

aquaGirl: Component 
'girl in aqua; centre central pink hair pink-haired aqua dressed female; girl 
woman elf Etuye Alasne; it'
"[a score of lines...]"

Now, X GIRLS work as intended, giving the desc of the fground component, but whatever I try, X WOMEN spew all four rather long descriptions, 80+ lines of text, and I guess this is not precisely a QoL thing for player in the specific case (elsewhere, dealing with furniture, the plural of same-name but different things is logical, but in this case, the player is examining a rather complex depiction, with 40 or so components, and at the very beginning of the story)

(BTW, for the singulars, both X GIRL and X WOMAN correctly offers the disamb between the three singular components, excluding the plural one)

I have tried everything, even obscure things from the depths of the reference manual, e.g. vocabLikelihood property, with no results…

I’ll go to sleep, very tired, hope that someone can give indications of how to deal with this new DWIM(P) issue…

G’night from Italy (02:30 here),
dott. Piergiorgio.

2 Likes
2

If I understand what you’re trying to do here, I think you’d be better off using the CollectiveGroup class for your fground object (see the extras section of the adv3Lite manual), and then add collectiveGroups = [fground] to each of the other three objects:

fground: CollectiveGroup 'trio of girls; diverse three radiantly saluting young 
smiling happy; girls women; them'
"[a score of lines...]"
location = somewhere
;

redGirl: Component 'girl in red; left raven haired raven-haired hair petite 
red dressed horned female winged; woman girl daemon demon Atuzejiki Azuj; 
it'
"[a score of lines...]"

collectiveGroups = [fground]
;

...
1 Like
3

Thanks, Eric !

Probably you don’t have precisely get the problem (because of my english ?), because what I want is that the examining with plural gives an overall description of the trio (side note, CollectiveGroup don’t have a template, so needs desc = “[a score of lines]”, but the issue, I think, became another:

both Component and CollectiveGroup aren’t mix-in classes, and fground (together with 40 or so components of the painting) is a Component not only for consistency with the world model…

Tomorrow or Thursday I’ll test your idea, and see if can have side effects on the “not only” I wrote above…

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio

4

Component and CollectiveGroup both descend from Fixture, so to make a CollectiveGroup behave like a Component you could either define it as a Component, CollectiveGroup or simply as CollectiveGroup with its cannotTakeMsg and locType properties overridden to match those of Component.

That is precisely what a CollectiveGroup should do. A CollectiveGroup defined with plural vocabulary should handle an EXAMINE command instead of the EXAMINE command being handled by the individual items for which it stands in. (You can also make a CollectiveGroup handle other actions in this way, if you wish).

3 Likes
5

This does the trick ! Thanks !!
(you should add to the doc of a3Lite that classes descending from parent can be mixed-in…)

Thanks again, and
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio

1 Like