![]() | Chapter 6: Descriptions | ![]() ![]() |
6.1. What are descriptions? |
It is in describing circumstances that Inform really capitalises on the concise, expressive power of natural language, and this chapter brings together the facts about "descriptions".
The simplest descriptions consist of a noun alone. Some refer to single things ("lantern", or "wine cask"), others to kinds of thing ("dead end" or "container"). But we have also seen adjectives alone:
The oaken desk is fixed in place.
Here, "fixed in place" is a description which, to Inform's simple-minded grammar, is a single adjective. And of course adjectives and nouns can be combined:
The cargo trunk is an openable container.
The description "openable container" consists of the noun "container", meaning a kind of thing, and the adjective "openable", which means one of the two possible states of an either/or property held by that thing.
As the next chapter will show, rules also make great use of descriptions:
Instead of throwing something at a closed openable door, say "Or you could just use the handle like anyone else, of course."
We have already seen that we can list the items fitting a given description:
"You look down at [the list of things in the basket]."
It's also sometimes convenient to count them up:
number of (description of values) ... number
This phrase counts the number of values matching the description, which may of course be 0. Example:
number of open doors
produces the number of doors, anywhere in the model world, which are currently open. A Problem message is produced if the number is potentially infinite, or impractical to count: for instance, Inform rejects "number of odd numbers".
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It is because descriptions are so widely useful that they deserve a chapter of their own, and this is it.
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