17.15. Printing room description details of something

| Chapter 17: Activities |

| 17.15. Printing room description details of something

1. When it happens. When an item is listed in the miscellaneous collection of items present in a room (the ones which do not deserve their own paragraphs): this is normally the last paragraph of a room description.

2. The default behaviour. A bracketed piece of extra information is added for certain items such as containers:

> You can also see Po and a cage (empty) here.

The " (empty)" (note initial space) was added by this activity. (Note that this activity is not responsible for describing further items visible because of the item in question: that is, it does not print the text such as "(in which is a notepad)" which would appear if there were contents. If we want to remove such text, we should use "omit contents in listing": see the activity "for printing the name of something".)

3. Examples. (a) To get rid of such addenda entirely, try:

> Rule for printing room description details: stop.

(b) To add a new form of addendum:

> Rule for printing room description details of a person:
> say " (at last, someone to talk to)" instead.

If both examples (a) and (b) are in place at once, we might now read:

> You can also see Po (at last, someone to talk to) and a cage here.

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| Example Rules of Attraction A magnet which picks up nearby metal objects, and describes itself appropriately in room descriptions and inventory listings, but otherwise goes by its ordinary name. |
RB

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