Re: Announcing: Fyleet, Crobe, Sangraal

[tbarrie@ibm.net (Trevor Barrie)]

On Sat, 28 Aug 1999 11:23:30 +0100, Steve Young <steveyoung@eclipse.co.uk> 
wrote:

>>Do people _really_ make very frequent use of the full power of
>>advanced parsers?

No, but I expect they often use more than two words. I certainly do.

>I don't believe people ever have, though I could be wrong. I know I
>always use as simple as commands as I can get away with.
>
>This thing with advanced parsers that could do all elaborate things
>started taking place in the mid 80's, with the authors and companies
>believing that was what the public wanted, whereas in truth most of the
>adventurers hated them

Basis for this claim? I have difficulty picturing anybody throwing a
copy of Zork across the room upon learning that it lets you use
articles.

>and only wanted something that could understand what they were trying to 
>say or do. Instead of correcting the problems of guess the verb, they 
>ignored that and made the parser as elaborate as possible.

Of course, you really _can't_ eliminate the problem of guess-the-verb
while using a two-word parser, as the most intuitive wording is often
going to be more than two words.