Preliminaries

• What This Module Does - An overview of the assertions module's role and abilities.

Chapter 1: Configuration and Control

• Assertions Module - Setting up the use of this module.

Chapter 2: Declarations

Passing three times through top-level declarations and assertion sentences.

• Booting Verbs - In Inform even verbs are created with natural language sentences, but this process has to start somewhere.

• Passes through Major Nodes - To manage the overall process of traversing the parse tree for top-level declarations and assertion sentences.

• Anaphoric References - To keep track of the current object and subject of discussion.

• Classifying Sentences - To work out the verbs used and to diagram sentences in the source.

• Property Sentences - To examine assertion sentences for property creation.

• Imperative Subtrees - To tidy up blocks of rule and phrase definition in the syntax tree.

Chapter 3: Requests

Sentences, often imperative, which have special meanings.

• Debugging Log Requests - Special sentences for changing what goes into the debugging log.

• Pluralisation Requests - Special sentences for setting exotic plural forms of nouns.

• Translation Requests - Three unrelated senses of "X translates into Y as Z" sentences.

• New Use Option Requests - Special sentences for creating new use options.

• Use Options - Special sentences for setting compilation options.

• Test Requests - Special sentences for requesting unit tests or providing test scripts.

• Define by Table Requests - Special sentences declaring that tables amount to massed groups of assertions.

• Rule Placement Requests - Special sentences for listing named rules in particular rulebooks.

• New Activity Requests - Special sentences creating new activities.

• New Literal Pattern Requests - Special sentences creating new notations for literal values.

• New Relation Requests - Special sentences for creating new relations.

• New Property Requests - Special sentences creating new either/or properties.

• New Verb Requests - Special sentences for creating new verbs.

• New Adjective Requests - Special sentences for creating new adjectives.

• Intervention Requests - Special sentences for inserting low-level material written in Inform 6 notation.

Chapter 4: Assertions

Turning regular assertion sentences into propositions about the model world.

• Name Resolution - To resolve abbreviated or ambiguous nouns in context of their headings.

• Refine Parse Tree - To determine which subjects are referred to by noun phrases such as "the table" or "a paper cup" found in assertion sentences.

• The Creator - This is where all objects, kinds of object, named values, kinds of value and global variables are made.

• Assertions - To infer facts about the model world, or take other action, based on sentences asserted as being true in the source text.

• New Property Assertions - When regular assertion sentences create properties.

• Property Knowledge - This section draws inferences from assertions which seem to be about the properties of things, independent of their location.

• Relation Knowledge - This section draws inferences about the relationships between objects or values.

• Assemblies - To build the complex multi-object assemblies which result from allowing the source text to say things like "in every room is a vehicle".

• Implications - To keep track of a dangerous form of super-assertion called an implication, which is allowed to generalise about properties.

Chapter 5: Imperative Code

What happens to preambles, colons, and blocks of imperative code.

• Imperative Definitions - Each IMPERATIVE node in the syntax tree makes a definition using imperative code.

• Imperative Definition Families - Different categories of imperative definition.

• Adjectival Definition Family - Imperative definitions of "Definition: X is Y: ..." adjectives.

• To Phrase Family - Imperative definitions of "To..." phrases.

• Phrase Type Data - To create, manage, compare the logical specificity of, and assist excerpt parsing concerning, the type of a To phrase.

• Parsing Type Data - To parse the prototype text of a To... phrase into its type data.

• Phrase Options - To create and subsequently parse against the list of phrase options with which the user can choose to invoke a To phrase.

• Rule Family - Imperative definitions of rules.

• Runtime Context Data - To store the circumstances in which a rule phrase should fire.

Chapter 6: Rules, Rulebooks and Activities

Rules are named phrases which are invoked in a particular way, and rulebooks a way to organise lists of them.

• Rules - Rules contain imperative code which is executed when certain actions, activities or other processes are being followed.

• Rule Bookings - Bookings are assignments of rules to rulebooks.

• Booking Lists - Booking lists are linked lists of rule bookings. The content of a rulebook is a booking list.

• Rulebooks - Rulebooks collate rules and provide an organised way for them to collaborate on a larger task.

• Focus and Outcome - What a rulebook works on, and what it produces.

• Activities - To create and manage activities, which are bundles of rules for carrying out tasks.

• Shared Variables - Shared variables are held in common by all rules working in some goal.

Chapter 7: Other Gadgets

Tables and equations do not look like sentences, but are also top-level.

• Table Columns - To manage the named columns which appear in tables.

• Tables - To manage and compile tables, which are two-dimensional arrays with associative look-up facilities provided at run-time.

• Equations - To manage and compile equations, which relate numerical quantities.

Chapter 8: Predicates

Unary and then binary predicates for the calculus module to conjure with.

• Kind Predicates Revisited - To define how the kind predicates behave in the Inform language.

• The Adjectival Predicates - To define the predicates connected to linguistic adjectives.

• The Creation Predicates - To define the predicates causing instances to be created.

• The Equality Relation Revisited - To define how equality behaves in the Inform language.

• Quasinumeric Relations - To define the binary predicates corresponding to numerical comparisons.

• The Universal Relation - To define the universal relation, which can apply and therefore subsumes all other relations.

• Explicit Relations - To draw inferences from the relations created explicitly by the source text.

• Listed-In Relations - To define the binary predicates corresponding to table columns, and which determine whether a given value is listed in that column.

• Adjective Ambiguity - Managing the multiple contextual meanings which a single adjective can have.

• Adjective Meanings - One individual meaning which an adjective can have.

• Adjective Meaning Domains - What a single sense of an adjective can apply to: perhaps a kind or an instance.

• Adjectives by Phrase - Adjectives defined by an I7 phrase written out longhand.

• Adjectives by Condition - Adjectives defined by a one-line I7 condition.

• Adjectives by Inter Function - Defining an adjective with an Inter function to test or make it true.

• Adjectives by Inter Condition - Defining an adjective with an Inter condition.

• Calculus Utilities - Utility functions for creating basic propositions using these predicates.