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Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 08:52:14 -0400
From: John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com>
Organization: No Conspiracy Here...
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Subject: Re: Ship Directions
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"Paul J. Furio" wrote:

> A quick question:
>         I'm defining some direction renaming objects like such
>         Object fore_obj "fore" compass
>                 with    name "fore" "forward",
>                         door_dir n_to,
>                         has scenery;
>         to get the directions fore, aft, port and starboard.  Are
> there any "standard" one or two letter abbreviations I should be using
> to make navigation easier?  (i.e 'p' & 'sb'.)  I noticed a potential
> problem if I define "a" as short for aft, as it may conflict with
> commands like "take a pear."  How can I get around this?

As I understand it, a/a won't clash, because they're different parts of
speech--just like you can "board the board," should you have both noun and
verb "board" sitting around.

The dangerous one is starboard, because "sb" will only be obvious to
people who realize that "s" is taken by south...and for that, I really
don't have much advice.  However, the Infocom adaptation of The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy does this by overlaying the two sets of
directions, accepts only "sb" for "starboard," and notes that, somewhere
in the documentation.

Actually, I do have some semi-trivial advice.  Rotate the directions so
that "starboard" points "south."  Then all the ambiguity is neatly hidden.



