Re: Properly encoding "Project Gutenburg 1913 Webster Unabridged Dictionary".
On Sep 23, 7:56 pm, "John W. Kennedy" <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:
Daniel Pitts wrote:
To J.W.K. Would you be interested in continuing this discussion
through e-mail? (Don't use the address I have here, it won't go
through)
Honestly, you'd be better off with real experts. I've been programming
since 1965, my wife and I were beta testers for Infocom from 1984 on,
and I've been involved in post-Infocom IF software since the early 90s
(mainly after-the-fact OS/2 support for Infocom and a Java servlet that
could execute most Infocom games on cellphones via WAP -- in case you
don't know, Infocom games ran on a virtual machine), but there are
people way more knowledgeable than I am, people that I look up to in
this field the way that I look up to people like Jane Austen, K=E1lm=E1n
Imre, or Joe Straczynski in theirs.
I know enough to know that developing an IF parser is like herding cats;
I don't claim to be a cat herder myself. I'm only getting involved in
this because, as far as I know, I'm the only one in CLJP who's dipped a
toe in this pool at all -- and I've seen people crash and burn.
--
John W. Kennedy
"The bright critics assembled in this volume will doubtless show, in
their sophisticated and ingenious new ways, that, just as /Pooh/ is
suffused with humanism, our humanism itself, at this late date, has
become full of /Pooh./"
-- Frederick Crews. "Postmodern Pooh", Preface
Indeed, you do seem to be the most knowledgeable on this topic in this
group. Perhaps I should seek a mentor in raif then. I do have
experience building parsers. As a matter of fact, I've created some
sophisticated parsers by hand, rather than relying on a tool.
Anyway, enough about my random wanderings as a programmer. I
downloaded Inform 7 today, and I've been playing with it all day. So
far I'm impressed, but not overwhelmed. I find it easier to model my
world with code rather than natural language, but I'm sure that I'll
get the hang of this eventually.
Thanks for your help JWK.
Daniel.