(Resolved?) Phrases revisited

[Eleas (Björn Paulsen)]

Some may remember this fairly recent thread, where a technique zarf submitted seemed to work inconsistently.

I reported it to the Mantis bug tracker, and it’s now been reviewed. To recap:

The kitchen is a room. The lounge is north of the kitchen. The rock is held by the player. The description 
of the rock is "[rock-desc location][run paragraph on]". 

Glitziness is a kind of value. The glitzinesses are swanky, smart, smooth and neato.
The sculpture is in  the lounge. The sculpture has a glitziness. The description of the sculpture is 
"[sculpt-desc glitziness][run paragraph on]". The sculpture is smooth.

To say rock-desc (R - room):
say "It's a rock." [general case]

To say rock-desc (R - Kitchen):
say "It's a kitchen rock."

[Trying the same thing for values:]
To say sculpt-desc (G - glitziness):
say "It's just kinda nice."

To say sculpt-desc (G - smooth):
say "It's actually kind of smooth."

@EmacsUser

Confirmed, with “x rock / n / x rock / x sculpture.” The I6 code is as described; there is no resolve procedure.

Graham has now taken a look at the issue, and it doesn’t seem to be a proper bug.

It took me quite a while to track down this bug, because it isn’t a bug at all: Inform is behaving correctly. In the definition “To say sculpt-desc (G - smooth)”, “smooth” is read as an adjective which G must satisfy. Since “smooth” applies only to the sculpture, this is a definition applicable to objects, not to glitzinesses. It therefore doesn’t enter into contention as a possible way to supply “[sculpt-desc glitziness]”, because that applies to the glitziness of the sculpture (which is not smooth), not to the sculpture (which is).

With that in mind, I’ve tried to resurrect the technique, but I’m simply not proficient enough to create a technique similar to Zarf’s but using values or properties. So far, it’s not worked, and I think I’m missing something basic in how values operate. Given what Graham said, is zarf’s technique even applicable for values in this way, or am I going at it completely wrong?

[zarf (Andrew Plotkin)]

That’s an unfortunate collision of syntax, and I wish it were possible to say what I was trying to say (in “To say sculpt-desc (G - smooth)”.)

You can work around this, but it’s fairly awful and probably not worthwhile:

An exemplar is a kind of thing. A glitziness has an exemplar called exemplification.

Swanky-ex, smart-ex, smooth-ex, and neato-ex are exemplars.
The exemplification of swanky is swanky-ex.
The exemplification of smart is smart-ex.
The exemplification of smooth is smooth-ex.
The exemplification of neato is neato-ex.

To say sculpt-desc (G - glitziness):
	say "[sculpt-desc-ex exemplification of G]".

To say sculpt-desc-ex (E - exemplar):
	say "It's just kinda nice".

To say sculpt-desc-ex (E - smooth-ex):
	say "It's actually kind of smooth".

[Eleas (Björn Paulsen)]

@zarf

That’s an unfortunate collision of syntax, and I wish it were possible to say what I was trying to say (in “To say sculpt-desc (G - smooth)”.)

You can work around this, but it’s fairly awful and probably not worthwhile:

So I see. It’s good to know, though, so thank you. That sort of extensibility would be fairly useful to my mind, so much so that I’m considering dipping into I6 on the off chance of a solution being found there.