§18.25. Listing nondescript items of something
1. When it happens. This activity prints up the also-ran paragraph at the end of a room description. These are nondescript items because they don't merit paragraphs of their own: if, as sometimes happens, there are none in the room, then no such paragraph is printed and this activity does not happen. (So to add a further paragraph to a room description, a simpler "after looking" rule should be used, not an "after listing nondescript items" rule.)
2. The default behaviour. The paragraph ordinarily reads as "You can also see a cask and a clock." or similar. Before the activity begins, those objects which are nondescript - in this case the cask and the clock - are given the property of being "marked for listing".
If it turns out that nothing is marked for listing, because of before rules like the one in the example below, then nothing is printed and the activity is abandoned, so that the rules for and after are never reached.
3. Examples. (a) Promoting something out of the nondescript category, by unmarking it.
Before listing nondescript items:
if the watch is marked for listing:
say "The watch catches your eye.";
now the watch is not marked for listing.
(b) Changing the normal phrasing of the paragraph. Note that we can also change the listing style; the one below is the default.
Rule for listing nondescript items of the Distressingly Messy Room:
say "Strewn carelessly on the floor";
list the contents of the Distressingly Messy Room, as a sentence,
tersely, listing marked items only, prefacing with is/are,
including contents and giving brief inventory information;
say "."
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![]() | Back to §18.24. Writing a paragraph about |
![]() | Onward to §18.26. Printing the locale description of something |
There are times when, for greater elegance of prose, we'd like to mention an object in the main body text of a room. For instance:
As we've already seen, that's no problem if Rip is scenery. He'll stay there motionless. But what if something in the game allows Rip to wake up? Or what if we want to use the same technique on a portable object that the player should be allowed to take? Clearly in that case it's not appropriate to make the mentioned thing be scenery, and at the same time, we need to keep Inform from adding a superfluous
to the end of our description. Here is how:
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There are times when, for greater elegance of prose, we'd like to mention an object in the main body text of a room. For instance:
As we've already seen, that's no problem if Rip is scenery. He'll stay there motionless. But what if something in the game allows Rip to wake up? Or what if we want to use the same technique on a portable object that the player should be allowed to take? Clearly in that case it's not appropriate to make the mentioned thing be scenery, and at the same time, we need to keep Inform from adding a superfluous
to the end of our description. Here is how:
There are times when, for greater elegance of prose, we'd like to mention an object in the main body text of a room. For instance:
As we've already seen, that's no problem if Rip is scenery. He'll stay there motionless. But what if something in the game allows Rip to wake up? Or what if we want to use the same technique on a portable object that the player should be allowed to take? Clearly in that case it's not appropriate to make the mentioned thing be scenery, and at the same time, we need to keep Inform from adding a superfluous
to the end of our description. Here is how:
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