Aliases / Abbreviatrions

[GoogleCodeExporter]

What steps will reproduce the problem?
Misspelling complicated game-specific or generic terms all the time, like
'refrigerator' or 'through' (yeah, I know, those should be simple to type,
but aren't for me...)

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
It would be cool to have an alias expansion, so one can (dynamically while
playing or statically via garglk.ini) assign longer words to short
abbreviations, like the 'alias' command in bash/zsh/tcsh or in MUD clients.
Using them one could define in a (game-specific) ini file

  alias lkt  "look through "
  alias lin  "look in "
  alias swon "switch on "
  alias swof "switch off "
  alias src  "search "

Or even global aliases as in zsh

  alias -g thru "through"
  alias -g fridge "refrigerator"

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
gargoyle-2008-11-22-sources_rc4

Please provide any additional information below.

This is low priority, probably not that many people would use it, but I'd
find it great. 

Original issue reported on code.google.com by unixprog@googlemail.com on 26 Nov 2008 at 11:12

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Original comment by bcressey@gmail.com on 27 Nov 2008 at 11:23

• Changed state: Accepted
• Added labels: Component-UI, OpSys-All, Type-Enhancement
• Removed labels: Type-Defect

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Original comment by bcressey@gmail.com on 1 Dec 2008 at 4:44

• Added labels: Usability

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I realized yesterday that I'd love this functionality, if only to support common
abbreviations that aren't supported in a particular game.  For example, "x" for
"examine" is quite common, but not supported in most (any?) of the old Infocom 
games.
 Trinity spent a lot of time yesterday complaining that "x" wasn't a verb. 
Similarly, some development systems don't have quite as rich a set of 
abbreviations,
and this would help there.

Original comment by Alan.A.D...@gmail.com on 1 Dec 2008 at 8:12

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Apparently the three basic abbreviations 'g' (again), 'x' (examine) and 'z' 
(wait)
can be enabled in frotz via it's config file ('~.frotzrc') and command line 
switch
('-x'). The section of the frotz manpage relating to this states

expand_abb   on | off
       Expand abbreviations.  Default is off.  Expand the abbreviations "g",  "x", 
and "z" to "again", "examine", and "wait".  This switch is for use with old 
Infocom
games that lack these common abbreviations which were introduced in later 
games.  Use
it with caution.  A few games might use the "g", "x", or "z" for different 
purposes.

Alas, when I tried it with trinity (using frotz v.2.43) it didn't work. Instead 
of
plainly not considering 'x' a verb when in default mode (as chaos reported), 
trinity
still doesn't know what to do with it, when frotz is in 'expand abbreviations 
mode':

  >x me
  [The word "x" isn't in the vocabulary that you can use.]

  >x me
  [You don't need to use the word "x" to complete this story.]

  >x me
  [This story doesn't recognize the word "x."]

Strangely, 'z' works both when 'expand_abb' is and is not set and 'g' works 
only when
'expand_abb' is not set. Not a very consistent behaviour from a user's point of 
view.

If I just missed the point and there is a frotz-specific way to enable 
abbreviations
after all, this would still not enable it for other platforms.

Original comment by unixprog@googlemail.com on 1 Dec 2008 at 11:03

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I have no plans to implement this in the near future. I may revisit it once I 
settle on a better way to configure the aliases.

Original comment by bcressey@gmail.com on 17 Aug 2010 at 9:28

• Changed state: WontFix
• Removed labels: Component-UI, Usability

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I have no plans to implement this in the near future. I may revisit it once I 
settle on a better way to configure the aliases.

Original comment by bcressey@gmail.com on 17 Aug 2010 at 9:28