Programatically printing all properties associated with object?

[weaver (Sam Weaver)]

@Zed pointed me to this topic in my discussion on this other thread:

Computed new value properties

WI 4.8 talks about how properties can be defined with values attached. I’d like to write the equivalent of a “computed” property (or a property getter) for objects of the thing kind, in an attempt to enable JSON serialization. Something to the effect of the below (this is an attempt, I know it’s not valid I7) A thing has some text called the JSON representation. The JSON representation of a thing is "{ 'name' : '[a thing]' }" (obviously this would be extended to include other properties) The…

I had some ideas.

@Draconis

the kind of each property doesn’t seem to be stored anywhere that I6 can get at it. That’s unfortunate.

Would it be possible to write something in I7 that annotates the type of each property somewhere? on the object? As well as something that automates the naming of properties and translates what would otherwise be an invalid provides statement?

So something that would transform the below:

Color is a kind of value. The colors are red, green and blue. 
A ball is a kind of thing.
A ball has a color.

Instead of examining:
	say "You detect that [the noun] is";
	if the noun provides color:
		say " [color of noun]";

Into something like:

Table of Property Kinds
thing   prop    kind
with 1 blank row

Color is a kind of value. The colors are red, green and blue.
A ball is a kind of thing.
A ball has a color called the color-prop.

Table of Property Kinds (continued)
thing   prop            kind
ball    "color-prop"    "color"

Instead of examining:
	say "You detect that [the noun] is";
	if the noun provides color-prop:
		say " [color-prop of noun]";

I’m not sure if I’ve gotten the syntax exactly right, or if something like this would even be memory-efficient, but would an approach like this (a) be automatable thru I7 rules / text substitutions and (b) solve the problem of not knowing the kind of a property when printing it?