[I7] Default messages redux

[Jesse McGrew]

On Sun, Feb 17, 2008 at 9:05 AM, Graham Nelson
<graham at gnelson.demon.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
>  The Standard Rules have been revised throughout: they are now more
>  logically
>         constructed, easier to read and better presented (for instance, in the
>         Phrasebook index, which has a slightly new look). They advance formally
>         to version 2.
>         While much altered internally, they are almost exactly the same from
>  the
>         user's point of view, except that:
>         - The property "inventory listing" for things has been withdrawn.
>         (A fossil from the days of Inform 6: in I7's more rule-oriented way of
>         looking at things, gadgets like this one are more an obstruction than a
>         help, and it was striking that not one of the hundreds of examples ever
>         used this property. And users often found it misleading that the
>  property
>         didn't play well with the activity "printing the name of something".)

Setting an "inventory listing" property seems to be the most
straightforward way to disable the built-in inventory details like
"(providing light)" as of 5J39. If it's going to be removed, I hope
we'll have another way to do that - maybe a "printing inventory
details of something" activity.

Jesse