[CF List] Re: [CF:1366] CF 0.95.6: Character lost at sea, odd behavior following recovery

[scott]

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     Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 23:21:12 -0700
     
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     From: Mark Wedel <
      
      mwedel at scruznet.com
      
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     Frank McKenney wrote:
     
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        - 'Inventory:' items are no longer pluralized... until I drop them.
     
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          Once an item moves ot the 'You see:'  window, it gets pluralized.
     
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          If I pick it up again, the plural vanishes. E.g.,
     
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          "20 gold coin" -> "20 gold coins" -> "20 gold coin"
     
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      This is more because the client is supposed to handle the pluralization 
     
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     words.  This was done somewhat to conserve bandwidth (save transmitting 
     
     the
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     names when the only thing that has changed is the number.)
     
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      However, the client doesn't do that right now.  I think at one time I had
     
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     attempted to write the client in to do that, but it did it incorrectly on 
     
     enough
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     items it appeared more annoying than the usefulness gained.
     
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      A better approach would be to only send the name when the number of items
     
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     change which also causes a change in the plural form (basically, if old or
     
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     number of items =1, resend name).  The problem with that approach is that 
     
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     function that updates the client doesn't know the old value, and even many
     
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     calling functions don't explicity know the value.  I suppose an old_nrof 
     
     field
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     could be added to the object structure and use that to know if we should 
     
     update
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     the name or not.
     
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That seems like a terrible approach.  I think it makes far more sense
to approach it similar to that for images.  Image names are sent by
the server and if the client doesn't have that image then client requests
it from the server.  Object name should be sent by server and if client
doesn't know the plural of that name then it requests the plural name
from the server.  Client should quickly be able to cache every plural
name.  The artifacts file would thus have new option "plural" which
is the name of the plural form of the object.  It would default to merely
adding an 's' to the singular form of the object.  Thus, only irregular
plural items would need to have the plural form specified.

This approach also allows the client to know that a single gold coin
is the same item type as "gold coins" since client knows them as being
the same item name but with different display names.  Also, this approach
allows current clients to continue unchanged while new clients know to
ask the server for the plural name.

							sdw