[MUD-Dev] Text Parsing

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

"Travis S. Casey" wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Jun 1999, Katrina McClelan wrote:
> 
> > a huge hoard of orcs spot you and reach for their weapons with a snarl.
> > -> take off running away from the orcs.
> >
> > -> put on cloak.
> > you put on the white cloak.
> > -> look around.
> > an off white cloak lies on the ground here.
> > -> take off white cloak.
> >
> > (If you have a parser that will not blarf all over any of these, I'm
> > _much_ impressed)
> 
> Depends on what you mean by "blarf".  My own parser would have done the
> intended thing for all but "take off running away from the orcs."

Intended by whom???  Certainly not the user:

[take off] [white cloak]
[take] [off white cloak]

Basically you would need to either reserve the keyword "off", require single
word commands, make an arbitrary choice or be "context sensitive" (take
prior actions into consideration):

> > -> put on cloak.
> > you put on the white cloak.
[white cloak has focus 1.0]
> > -> look around.
> > an off white cloak lies on the ground here.
[white cloak has focus 0.5]
[off white cloak has focus 1.0]
> > -> take off white cloak.
[off white cloak has higher focus]
You pick up the off white cloak

> (If I saw that on a mud which was supposed to have "natural language
> input", the first thing I'd do is complain -- it's "altar" not "alter".

Hopefully it will be on an English MUD, and not a scandinavian one. Unless
you want to complain more than you play, that is. :P

>  - There's a long way between trying to improve mud parsers by making use
>    of NLP ideas and trying to implement full "natural language" input.

It is still a question if it is an improvement over a well thought out and
well defined interface.  I am particularly unhappy about dumb first-fit
searches.
--
Ola


_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev maillist  -  MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev