[MUD-Dev] Re: (fwd) Re: command parsers: a modest proposa

[Ling]

On Wed, 8 Jul 1998, Adam Wiggins wrote:
> 
> Personally I despise these things; I want a homogeneous parser, for a
> lot of reasons I've detailed before (lag being one of the main ones).  At
> best there's the old infocom thing:
> 
> % get rock
> Which do you mean?
> % the cracked one
> Okay, you get the cracked rock.
> 
> In this case you don't go to any sub-menu, it's just that you get a single
> command chance to enter something which normally would do nothing, but in
> that case acts as an answer to its question.

Is this the parser I read about when I was teenie that also does the
following:

  > get key
  The red one or the green ones?
  > green
  The metal green key or plastic green key?
  > metal
  You pick up the metal green key.

Or something like that.  It allowed the user to refine the filter with
more and more feedback.  This seems natural.  Of note is a system called
Rabbit which worked along the same lines.  You go up to it and at the
active line (which happens to be type of place you wanna go to) type in: 

  > restaurant

And it'd come back with any old restaurant then the user realises
he/she/it can specify a rough location, price, cusine, etc on the form.
Then the book I was reading went on to mutter something about teaching the
user how to work the program without the need for extra instructions.
It's called intuitive or something like that.

  |    Ling Lo of Remora (Top Banana)
_O_O_  Elec Eng Dept, Loughborough University, UK.     kllo at iee.org