"proof-of-concept" Revolution Online Open Dictionary at revcoders.org

[Ken Ray]

On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:37:10 -0700 (PDT), User wrote:

> Peter,
> 
> I don't understand what you are saying here f(I've perhaps not had 
> enough caffeine yet this morning).  Could you please clarify?

Correct me if I'm wrong, Peter, but I think you mean something along 
the lines of the "old" SuperCard printed documentation that had/has:

1) A "Procedural Index" that let you look things up based on tasks and 
their connected object(s) when applicable, and vice-versa. So for 
example the intro to the index says:
  
  For example, SuperTalk elements related to clicking on a button 
  may be found by looking under the alphabetical object heading 
  of "Buttons" and the task subheading of "Clicking". It may also 
  be found under the alphabetical task heading of "Clicking", and 
  the object subheading of "Buttons".

Here's a few (severely truncated) examples:

  Animation
     along a path ...... move command
     movies ............. see 'Movies'
     
  AppleScript
     creating ............ script function; compile keyword
     running ............. script function; run keyword

  Buttons
     creating ............. new command; newButton message
     titling ................ name property; showName property

and of course if you go to "C", you have:
  
   Creating
      buttons ............. new command; choose command; 
                                 tool property; drag command; 
                                 newButton message
      menus .............. new command; newMenu message

So you can see that if you were looking at how to create a button, you 
could attack it from either "Buttons" or "Creating". (BTW: There should 
also have been an entry called "Making" that says "See Creating" to 
deal with synonyms, FYI.)

2) The "Lexical Index" that lets you look at things broken into main 
categories (Operators/Commands/Functions/Properties) with subcategories 
(Animation Functions/System Functions/Text Functions/etc.). Here's a 
simple example:

Commands
-----------------
Arithmetic Commands
  add command; divide command; multiple command;
  subtract command

Interface Commands
  answer command; ask command; ask icon command

Functions
-----------------
Animation Functions
  movie function; quickTimeVersion function

Keyboard Functions
  commandKey function; cmdKey function; optionKey 
  function; shiftKey function


And these indices pointed back to the exhaustive documentation on each 
token in the language. This allowed the user to look things up either 
by the token itself, the task they were trying to accomplish, or the 
kind of category of things they thought it would belong to. So if 
someone was trying to discover the syntax for adding two numbers 
together, they could look up "add" in the language guide itself, or 
"Math: adding" or "Numbers: calculating" in the Procedural Index, or 
"Arithmetic Commands" in the Lexical Index.

I'm sure more ways of looking up info can be added, including 
synonyms/antonyms/etc., but you get the idea.


Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software, Inc.
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com
Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/