Auto-punctuation, helpful or hindering?

[IAmJacksOpinion]

Are you there Imms? It's me, Jack'sOpinion.

I have this nasty habit of putting a space at the end of what I type. I think it stems from the idea that after I finish one sentence I'm going to want to go on to another, so adding the space makes natural sense. The problem here is that, when I'm emoting, the mud registers this space as the end of my sentence, rather than the period before it. Seeing that my last character is not a period, it takes the liberty of adding one in. As a result, 50% of my emotes look like this:

The man with the plan rubs his chin dubiously. .
The man with the plan sets to work assembling a rubber band, an old surf-board, and an old Cabota lawn more into a deadly assault vehicle. .

I wish the MUD would filter these out as well.  One of my ex-girlfriends did the same exact thing.

Actually, it's me, too.  I do this all the time!  I didn't know the cause of it though . .

I like looking for periods to forage.

Quote slightly truncated.

This all came from Random Tiny Wants. I posted it there to test the reaction I would get to ensure that I wasn't wasting time by discussing it. Seems other people have this problem too. I think I already spoke my mind about it in my quote at the top up there, but the post brought other questions to mind.

I like that it adds periods.

The problem I have is the is no continuity on other things.

change ldesc will not add the period.

Neither does drop...but I think arrange will.

You can usually tell who I am by looking for a changed ldesc without a period.

True. Ldesc doesn't add periods.
Neither do the gambit of arrange/drop.

Say/tell doesn't add them, but it leaves the space in at the end.

You say, in n00bish:
    "Man, I have got to stop sparring meks.  "

And here's another personally favorite fuck up of mine:

->sit (flopping down on the ground.)
Flopping down on the ground., you sit down.

So, what are your thoughts? Do you think the emote/say system deserves a little tweaking for purposes of beautifying the language of the game, and not distracting from RP (Either on the end of the person that sees these little grammatical eye-sores, or the person who sees the stupid thing he just did and facepalms.)

[Gimfalisette]

It makes sense to me that say/tell do not add periods. Sometimes I want to:

tell man (suddenly slapping a hand to ^me forehead) Great Krath--

And not have a period sneak in there.

Stuff like ldesc, arrange, etc. should have the period auto-added to jibe better with other commands and with emotes.

[UnderSeven]

When I was a younger player, people used to say you should really add punctuation to your stuff and I did and it was good.

Why I'm against auto punctuation?  Well similarly to what Evil Villian Tyrannass Gimf said. . .

Sometimes bad punctuation is kind of on purpose.  When you're a new player, punctuating is good, but when you're more skilled, it can actually be a role play tool.  Not just ending a sentance with a dash to indicate interruption, but for instance you can NOT capitalize a sentence to indicate a meek appearance or a quieter action.. For instance.

THE SCARY GIMF QUEEN OF ALL EVIL SAYS,
"And who do you serve, welp?!"
I reply, meeky,
"ah, you."

Now, it might look messy in that example, but imagine I'm using proper punctuation every where else, so that this one time stands out and given the situation actually looks kind of cool. 

I'll grant in some places you can't screw around with grammar and punctuation quite as much to spice rp, but in some areas you can do all sorts of neat stuff.

[Lizzie]

In a game I used to play, a period would show up as a default at the end of any and every sentence. Thing that would change the default:

if you type ASK instead of SAY
if you use any other punctuation at the end of any sentence.

In those two instances, the default period would be replaced by whatever punctuation you put in, or a question mark in the case of "ask."

I don't see why Arm can't do the same.

[musashi]

I say make it an option you can toggle on or off. Have it default to on so it helps out the newbies, and for people who want to get fancy with their grammer usage, they can turn it off and have at it.

[Cavaticus]

In a game I used to play, a period would show up as a default at the end of any and every sentence. Thing that would change the default:

if you type ASK instead of SAY
if you use any other punctuation at the end of any sentence.

In those two instances, the default period would be replaced by whatever punctuation you put in, or a question mark in the case of "ask."

I don't see why Arm can't do the same.

It does it the other way around. If you end a sentence with a question mark, the output is "you ask so and so." If you end a sentence with an exclamation point, it's "exclaim."

[UnderSeven]

I prefer the way arm does it, Lizzie, I challenge you to a crab battle.  Anyway.  I still insist the best way is to let players have the control.

[IAmJacksOpinion]

Well, I agree that it probably shouldn't be added to say/tell type commands. I was simply noting that those didn't incorporate auto-punctuation for the sake of syntax grammar continuity.

The main thrust of the argument is that the code adds punctuation to emotes inconveniently, and that emotes are the ONLY syntaxes it does this in. The code could EASILY be written to sense a period, question mark, exclamation point, a dash, or whatever at the end of a sentence and leave it alone with a clever if/then type statement. (At least I think so. I took a couple programming classes in High School. Been a while though..)

And since we were talking about the uses of various punctuation, check out this bad boy:

:looks around!
The figure in a cloak looks around! .

It F's up the end of exclamatory emotes too!

[RogueGunslinger]

Uh... No it doesn't. I clearly remember exclamation emotes working.

[IAmJacksOpinion]

RGS, I pasted that as an actual log. (minus my description)

So. That quote is straight from the MUD.

[RogueGunslinger]

You can even end emotes with a /. I'm doing this right now too. In game. It's working. I'd post logs but they'd be IC.

[AmandaGreathouse]

I think he means because of the space issue. If you look, it has a space after the ! and before the . so that might be it. How does it parse with a space after it?

[MarshallDFX]

tell man (suddenly slapping a hand to ^me forehead) Great Krath--

... Is your character Doc Emmett Brown or something?

[RogueGunslinger]

I think he means because of the space issue. If you look, it has a space after the ! and before the . so that might be it. How does it parse with a space after it?

Nope. If i type: emote jumps in surprise! I will get: The tall, muscular man jumps in surprise!

[Cutthroat]

I think he means because of the space issue. If you look, it has a space after the ! and before the . so that might be it. How does it parse with a space after it?

Nope. If i type: emote jumps in surprise! I will get: The tall, muscular man jumps in surprise!

I think she wants you to try "emote <action>! " with a space after the exclamation point.

Well, commands already remove excess spaces at the beginning, so it should be possible to remove them from the end. Like:

Code Select Expand


>                      emote does the hokey-pokey
is fundamentally the same as

Code Select Expand


>emote does the hokey-pokey
So it should be possible to fix

Code Select Expand


>emote does the hokey-pokey_____________

So rather than talking about adding/removing auto-punctuation, we could also think about removing the pesky spaces causing trouble in the first place.

[RogueGunslinger]

Why would you add a space after your ending punctuation?

[Cutthroat]

Apparently it's a tic the OP has, though some people mistakenly do it too.

[RogueGunslinger]

Why should the code fix the players typo? It's not as if there is a flaw in the system.

[MarshallDFX]

Why should the code fix the players typo? It's not as if there is a flaw in the system.

Why should Word have spellcheck?

It's convenient and helpful and a nice feature.

[RogueGunslinger]

Yeah but I really don't think the problem you're having is that widespread, and worth the time required to fix.

Where do we stop? Should the mud have a built in spell checker that fixes typoed words too?

[Aaron Goulet]

The game only adds a period if a sentence doesn't end with !, -, ?, etc.

Since this is such a common problem, it's just a matter of checking to see if there is a '. ' (a space and a period or other symbol) at the end of a sentence.  If yes, remove the space.  If no (and it's just a space with no period or other symbol before it), replace the space with a period.  Problem solved, and everyone's happy!