Re: [Tads3] Listing Contents of Surfaces

["Mike Roberts" <mjr_@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

"steve breslin" <versim@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I prefer the simple:
>
> You see a small table. On the table is a banana, an orange, and a penguin.
You can get that effect by setting contentsListedSeparately=true for the 
Surface in question, or for all surfaces using 'modify Surface', if you 
prefer (or, if you want to go all out, for all objects using 'modify 
Thing').

> Or if you want something less choppy:
>
> You see a small table on which rests a banana, an orange, and a penguin.
(That should probably be "rest" rather than "rests".)  That's doable by 
customizing the surfaceInlineContentsLister with the new wording - really 
all you have to do is drop the parens from the prefix and suffix messages.  
That format gets to be awkward if there's more to list at the top level than 
just the table, though, so I wouldn't want to make it the default.

Overall, I think the parenthetical notation is the most flexible and 
consistent.  It would be nice to find a wording for surfaces that's parallel 
to the ordinary containment phrasing, though, rather than the 
mental-stack-intensive prepositional inversion of "on which is".  Something 
like "which holds" or "which is supporting", although not either of those.  
A nice, simple subject-switching complement of "x is on y" doesn't come to 
mind as readily as the "x is in y" <-> "y contains x" pair.

--Mike

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