offer correction suggestions for parsing problems

[amyjko]

offer correction suggestions for parsing problems

[amyjko]

This one is specifically about the "unknown" parsing error, where a whole can't be parsed. We need to give more instructive feedback about the error, and try to figure out what they were trying to type and offer targeted recommendations.

[mjslee]

For now, I have currently gone through the text.js file to redo the speech to make it more consistent for both the control and experimental conditions.

Any suggestions on how we can give feedback about what they typed in? Currently, only some of the function calls in text.js have variables pushed to them.

[amyjko]

The feedback should really depend on the tokens they have typed in. At the very least, we should be giving them some detail about the commands that Gidget knows and examples of how to type them. Even better would be feedback that's tailored to what they typed (for example, if there were typos, checking for off by one character typos and seeing if they match any of the commands or objects in the world, then recommending commands). If nothing matches, we could show a list of the commands that Gidget knows, like a help listing for a unix command.

[mjslee]

Got it. I think this will be a valuable feature of the language as it serves dual purposes - to highlight an error, and also to act as a teaching opportunity.

I haven't worked with this kind of text parsing/processing before, so I am certain that I won't have anything usable implemented by tomorrow's target pilot launch date.

[amyjko]

Let's talk about it in our meeting tomorrow.

[mjslee]

This is a reminder that we should talk about this during magic desk time.

[amyjko]

The feature idea:

• Add a cheat sheet below the code area that contains all of the commands that Gidget knows
• The commands that Gidget knows are determined by which level the player is on. Add some code to level specs that detail which commands are not available and use it to hide syntax on cheat sheet.
• When Gidget encounters some sort of parsing error, rather than offering suggestions in the dialog, he highlights elements of the cheat sheet to explain why he was confused.
• The user always has control over showing and hiding the cheat sheet
• The cheat sheet goes away after the parsing error is passed, unless the user was the one who opened it.

[amyjko]

Added a cheatsheet, a control for toggling it, and code that highlights specific parts of it when particular parsing errors are encountered.

Work remaining for Mike:

• Go through each level and call world.addHiddenCommand() for each command Gidget shouldn't show in the cheat sheet.
• Add all missing commands to cheat sheet, being careful to name them 'cheat-' since the UI code hides them based on the names passed into world.addHiddenCommand().

[mjslee]

• All current commands are included except for 'name.'
• All levels updated to hide unknown commands for that stage
• Changed some wording to make Gidget gender neutral.