the other day after writing unit tests for mutations, i got stuck on trying to figure out how exactly the ui should work –
i came up with the idea of using slash (/) commands ( like irc or slack, quake console, etc. ) to modify the story instead.
i like that it keeps the focus on text, leverages the existing autocomplete input box, and removes the need for fiddly ui work.
as a bonus, it seems to work okay in my simple tests. so what next?
paths for work are:
- undo/redo - you don’t realize how much you use it till it doesn’t exist.
- save/load - either a single story or several.
- bug fixing - cause there definitely are some.
- language improvements - trying to make the language understandable.
- style improvements - everything’s fairly ugly right now.
- story creation - verifying that i can re/create some inform-like stories.
factors are: if the whole approach doesn’t work, it’s not worth spending more time on. sharing it with other people requires basic usability features. the ultimate goal remains recreating stories as complex as alice.
spending too much time figuring out what to do is its own issue. i think i’ll at least scope undo/redo and save/load to make story creation and language improvement easier.
see that wasn’t too bad, was it?