16.16. Understanding things by their relations

| Chapter 16: Understanding |

| 16.16. Understanding things by their relations

Sometimes it makes sense for the name of something to involve the names of other things to which it is related. For instance, if we say TAKE THE BOTTLE OF WINE, we mean that the bottle currently contains wine - if it were the very same bottle containing water, we would call it something else.

For names which must involve related names, a special form of token is provided. For instance, we could say:

> A box is a kind of container. Understand "box of [something related by containment]" as a box.

> The Toyshop is a room. The red box is a box in the Toyshop. Some crayons are in the red box.

and now TAKE BOX OF CRAYONS will work, because CRAYONS matches against "[something related by containment]" for the red box - or it does for as long as the crayons are there. We can have similar matches against relations of all kinds, but have to name the relation explicitly, using its one-word name. (See the examples at the end of this section for plenty of cases.)

We can also reverse the sense. If we write:

> A box is a kind of container. Understand "box in [something related by reversed containment]" as a box.

> The Toyshop is a room. The crate and the hammock are in the Toyshop. In the crate is a box. In the hammock is a box.

then TAKE THE BOX IN THE HAMMOCK will work: here, the relation goes the other way, because the box is being contained by the other-named item, rather than doing the containing.

308
| Example Whither? A door whose description says where it leads; and which automatically understands references such as "the west door" and "the east door" depending on which direction it leads from the location. |
RB

Here we expand on the simple examples When? and Whence?; this time we want the player to be able to refer to doors by their directions, as in "the west door" when the door in question does in fact lead west. "Whither?" The temporal vortex is an open door. It is west of Yesterday and east of Today. The initial appearance of a door is usually "Nearby [an item described] leads [if the other side of the item described is visited][direction of the item described from the location] to [the other side][otherwise][direction of the item described from the location][end if]." Direction-relevance relates a door (called X) to a direction (called Y) when the direction of X from the location is Y. The verb to be directionally-relevant to implies the direction-relevance relation. Understand "[something related by direction-relevance] door" as a door. As an added touch, we respond also to the case where the player postulates a door in some direction when there is no such thing at the moment: Rule for printing a parser error when the player's command includes "[non-door direction] door": say "There is no door in that direction." instead. Definition: a direction (called direction D) is non-door: let the target be the room-or-door direction D from the location; if the target is a door: no; yes; Test me with "examine west door / x east door / w / x w door / x e door / tie me to the west door / tie the west door to me / push the west door east / push the east door west".

309
| Example Cinco A taco shell that can be referred to (when it contains things) in terms of its contents. |
RB

310
| Example Puncak Jaya When a character is not visible, responding to such commands as EXAMINE PETER and PETER, HELLO with a short note that the person in question is no longer visible. |
RB

311
| Example Claims Adjustment An instant camera that spits out photographs of anything the player chooses to take a picture of. |
RB

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