Let's Play/Read: Inform 7 manuals (Done for now)

[StJohnLimbo]

Regarding chapter 22, I haven’t really had an occasion to use the more abstract constructs in an actual IF project, but just recently I used the method from 22.8. Matching the names of kinds in a small example:

Place a vehicle that looks identical to another vehicle in different locations

Here’s a version which populates your city with cars from a separate “Carpool” room. The cars are of different types and have different colours, which can be used to disambiguate between them. You have to take care that the number of colours is equal to or greater than the number of cars of a type (so that each car of that type can have a unique colour), and that the number of cars in the carpool is equal to or greater than the number of roads. There are various ways one could do it, so this i…

[...]

A car is a kind of vehicle.

A sedan is a kind of car.
A convertible is a kind of car. 

[...]

To paint (name of kind of value K):
	let palette be the list of colours;
	sort palette in random order;
	repeat with paint-target running through Ks in the carpool:
		now the colour of paint-target is entry 1 of palette;
		remove entry 1 from palette;
        
When play begins:
	paint sedans;
	paint convertibles;

There are doubtlessly other ways to do this, but I felt it made for relatively compact, yet readable code, and it’s very easy to add further kinds of car, like SUVs, hatchbacks, etc., without having to change or duplicate much code.

(In the particular example, I wanted each sedan (etc.) to have a unique colour, but didn’t want to simply paint all cars in one go, because I wanted to re-use colours for different types, so we can have a red sedan and a red convertible, for example.)

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These threads have some further examples of how the techniques from chapter 22 might be used:

Problems displaying values with units; math with values that have units generally

You could use a custom “To decide” phrase to wrap the functions which are defined as real-to-real in the Standard Rules in order to use them for temperatures. One way to do that would be “quasi-functional-programming style” by parameterizing the phrase with the function (which is a phrase itself), like this: To decide which temperature is the result of (F - a phrase real number -> real number) of (T - a temperature): let temp-as-real be T divided by 1 degree centigrade; let r be F applied t…

Documentation, Chapter 22 ... Huh? Help Me Understand Please

Of all the things in Inform 7, I find the arrow notation to be the most confusing. It’s the least English-like. I never learned anything about this in math classes. So I looked it up, as one does. (The manual specifically says “phrase K → L” is meant to be like arrow notation in maths) I learned that F K → L would be pronounced “The function from K to L” and that K would be the domain and L would be the codomain. uh … okaaayyyyy … That’s almost kinda starting to make some sense. But also not …