[MUD-Dev] Text Parsing

[Travis S. Casey]

On Tue, 1 Jun 1999, Ben Greear wrote:

> There have been some very powerful parsers detailed here, at least
> for my humble defintion of a parser.  They offer such nice things
> as compound sentences, indirect objects and so on...
> 
> However, has anyone ever done any study or seen anything that proports
> to explain what a common (for some value of common) user would like?
> In other words, usability?
> 
> For instance, which of these would you chose to type:
> get the sword from the second bag
> get sword 2.bag
> ge sw 2.bag

Personally, I like the old maxim "Be liberal in accepting input, and
conservative in creating output."  Thus, my own preference would be for a
system that understands common Diku and LP-style commands, along with
English-like commands.  In examples, however, I'd adhere to a specific
syntax, leaving out extraneous elements, even when the parser can deal
with them.

The only thing I probably wouldn't do is the Diku style of allowing
shortest unambiguous matches -- I don't like it, since the shortest
unambiguous match can change over time.

> I don't mean this to be rehtorical(sp?).  I think one way to get this
> information would be to set up a system that could parse several
> different ways, explain this to players as desired, and then snoop
> their actual input.  What do they really type?  Over time patterns
> might emmerge.  It would also be interesting to snoop the commands
> that they typed that, for whatever reason, your parser didn't like.

Definitely.  It's always good to see what users are trying to do with your
system.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
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