[Ohrrpgce] Improvement to plotstrings

[Ralph Versteegen]

On further thought, it just seems best to use $"..." for this, because $ is
used for everything else involving plotstring IDs, including $=, $+, $==,
which is already perfectly consistent. And I should instead pick a
different syntax for expanding embed codes, since that has nothing to do
with plotstring IDs. We can decide that later, but we have no shortage of
options for it.

On 4 March 2018 at 07:52, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com> wrote:

> I kinda like ?"" because it is inexplicable ;)
>
> But I am also quite happy with @""
>
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 3, 2018 at 3:50 AM, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 4 March 2018 at 00:49, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3 March 2018 at 17:07, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> This sounds good to me.
>>>>
>>>> I think I like ?"literal" best. Its short, and although every option
>>>> has the potential to be confusing, I feel like that is the least confusing.
>>>> If some day years from now I am helping somebody debug a script that mixes
>>>> old-style plotstrings and plotstring literals with new real strings and
>>>> string expansion codes, I feel like ?"" will be easier to tell apart at a
>>>> glance from $"" than the other options thus far.
>>>>
>>>
>>> But the use of ? is inexplicable.
>>> I considered @"literal" earlier and discarded it, but on second thoughts
>>> it could be a good choice. @ produces the ID of a script or global
>>> variable, and here it would be the ID of a string literal. What I didn't
>>> like at first is that I want to extend @scriptname to return a callable
>>> function object, not just a script ID, like so:
>>>   subscript, squareof, x (...)
>>>   func := @squareof
>>>   show value(func(10))
>>> However, @globalname would still return an ID, and in all three cases @
>>> is returning a handle (to a constant object, even)
>>>
>> Err, actually if you use it on a subscript you get a closure, not a
>> constant.
>>
>>
>>> so I guess it's not a false commonality. They are three different
>>> things, so @ isn't single operator, but maybe it's better to use the same
>>> syntax for similar semantics than invent a unique syntax in each case.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Mar 2, 2018 at 6:28 PM, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ==Informationless introduction==
>>>>>
>>>>> Currently, the animation system uses strings for animation and variant
>>>>> names, and I'm thinking of using names for other things as well:  handle
>>>>> points ("hand", "handle", "stand") and sequence points ("attack", "hit").
>>>>> I'm not 100% decided, but I think it would probably be best to use
>>>>> strings in scripts as well rather than ID numbers (like slice lookup codes)
>>>>> since that requires name editors, new lumps, enums for special names,
>>>>> id->string tables for those enums, plotscr.hsd constants, hsi export code,
>>>>> and maybe another script like misc/sl_lookup.py to keep it all in sync.
>>>>> Which is a lot more complexity than just using strings!
>>>>>
>>>>> So you would write something like
>>>>>   play animation(sl, $0="walk")
>>>>>
>>>>> Also, I was looking through my code for Carcere Vicis, which uses a
>>>>> preprocessor to spit out HamsterSpeak code, which let me write stuff like:
>>>>>    say($"as you drink the", item, $"your whole body starts to tingle")
>>>>> (This expands to $NS="as you drink the", etc, where NS is a 'new
>>>>> string' script)
>>>>> Just making it easy to write string constants solves one of the
>>>>> biggest problem with plotstrings.
>>>>>
>>>>> ==Proposals==
>>>>>
>>>>> I think we should add special syntax which is like $...="..." but
>>>>> doesn't require manually specifying a string ID:
>>>>> -it returns the ID number for a special immutable string, which can be
>>>>> passed to other string commands
>>>>> -the engine assigns a string ID >= 100, so that it doesn't clash with
>>>>> manually allocated string IDs. It searches existing strings >= 100 for one
>>>>> with the desired value, and otherwise increases the number of strings,
>>>>> creating a new one. Strings are not garbage collected. No GC is not a
>>>>> problem, because you can't create more strings than exist in your script
>>>>> source code
>>>>> -the string can't be modified, as that would break other uses of the
>>>>> same ID. Passing to any script command doing so is an error.
>>>>> -strings >= 100 are saved in saves, just like other strings
>>>>> -the actual ID assigned to a particular string constant varies between
>>>>> different plays, but you will never hardcode an ID >= 100 into your scripts
>>>>> -maybe it shouldn't be displayable with showstringat, etc. This isn't
>>>>> necessary, but the intention is to use these as literals, not full-blown
>>>>> plotstrings. Maybe we should just allow all that, though?
>>>>>
>>>>> Call these plotstring literals. This is a temporary solution until we
>>>>> have real string literals; they will become obsolete.
>>>>> Therefore we can't just use "..." syntax; they're very different.
>>>>>
>>>>> As I mentioned before, I want to have a way to expand embed codes in
>>>>> strings immediately, and allow you to use names of local variables too. The
>>>>> syntax I'm leaning towards is to prefix the string with $, like
>>>>>   msg := $"${hp}"
>>>>> It's not the easiest to type, but the relationship to $-prefixed embed
>>>>> codes seems good. But there are many other options, like python 3's
>>>>> f"${hp}". Any other suggestions?
>>>>>
>>>>> If we're using $"..." for that, then it can't be used for plotstring
>>>>> literals.
>>>>>
>>>>> We could use something like $="..." or $?"..." or $$"..." to indicate
>>>>> the similarity to $...="...". But the close similarity of these to $"..."
>>>>> seems confusing.
>>>>> So maybe something different, like ?"...".
>>>>>
>>>>> Also, we should add $== as a shorthand for stringcompare.
>>>>> stringcompare is horribly verbose.
>>>>> Also, if hspeak sees you write something like
>>>>>   if(str == $?="")
>>>>> then it can throw an error and tell you to use $== instead. Note that
>>>>> comparing two plotstring literals with == will work, but comparing a
>>>>> plotscripting literal to a mutable plotstring won't!
>>>>>
>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>
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