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Jan 15, 2004, 4:26pm

This has been requested numerous times; the feature was originally rejected
personally by Roland, not due it being an unpleasant idea, but because at
the time he had planned to entirely rewrite the action scripting system.

It goes something like this:
Current commands for AW behaviors needn't be as long as they are. There's no
reasonable reason to be forced to use "create move" when an abbreviation of
some sort could easy save large amounts of cell space. "cr mv" would be
quite intuitive for AW veterans, and the long form commands would remain
intact.

Possible Aliases
Create - cr
Activate - ac
Bump - bp
Animate - an
Move - mv
Rotate - rt
Name - nm
Adone - ad
Astop - asp
Astart -ast
Light - lt
Corona - cn
Sound - sn
Noise - ns
Solid - sd
Visible - vs
Sign - sg
Picture - pc
Sign - sg
URL - url
Teleport - tp
Texture - tx
Warp - wp
Examine - ex
Frame - fr
Color - cl

I think that covers everything. Aliases for the commands could go a long way
towards reducing used cell data for complex animations and such; imagine, a
door trigger command:
"create name el_mg1_1t,animate el_mg1_1t . 1 1 0,astop;adone move 0 4 0
time=2 wait=10 name=el_mg1_1"
becomes:
"cr nm el_mg1_1t,an el_mg1_1t . 1 1 0,asp;ad mv 0 4 0 time=2 wait=10
name=el_mg1_1"
Which saves 17 characters. We could do a bit more if we also abbreviate
parameters like "time," "wait," and "name."

This would be a rather simple method to deal with current packet-related
cell data limitations. From a programmer's perspective, this cannot be an
entirely difficult change to make.

Obvious Counter-Argument

I've been in AW long enough to know that everything you post is going to be
attacked, so I'll cover the most severe counter to this suggestion: It's
completely unintuitive to the new user. Correct, however the old command set
would still be available for those uninterested in saving cell space or too
new to the program to use cryptic abbreviations.

-Monkey

Jan 15, 2004, 5:08pm

There is no reason the browser can't 'tokenize' the existing commands
into the much shorter commands you suggest, and then 'untokenize'
them when it's displaying them in the dialog box.

What you are suggesting could be done completely under the covers
without the users having to learn anything new at all.

[View Quote]

Jan 15, 2004, 7:15pm

frame??? whats frame used with??? and also there are some others he he :-)
[View Quote]

Jan 15, 2004, 10:46pm

http://www.activeworlds.com/help/aw34/frame_command.html

Can't say I've ever used that one.

[View Quote]

Jan 17, 2004, 10:27pm

Ive seen it used with my frame-based TV... the frames combine and then are
shifted though at the viewers leasure.

- MR
[View Quote]

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