Can you help me remove a leading space from this widget?

Question

I really struggle with <<nobr>>s and \s to remove whitespaces from my widgets.

So I have this widget:

<<widget "genericTaunt">><<nobr>>\
<<set _genericTaunt to [
'You scruffy looking nerf herder',
'Bantha poodoo',
'E chu ta']>>
<<= _genericTaunt.random()>>\
<</nobr>><</widget>>

The passage calls it like so:

"<<genericTaunt>>!" he snaps.

It outputs thusly (note the space after the first " ):

" E chu ta!" he snaps.

I tried putting \s in the array, but that returned an "invalid or unexpected token" error.  I also tried putting all the elements within the array onto one line, separated by commas, but that didn't remove the space.

Can anybody see what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

Look after the <<set>> macro.  For example:

'E chu ta']>>  ← Line break, which <<nobr>> turns into a space
<<= _genericTaunt.random()>>\

This widget is short enough, I'd suggest dropping the <<nobr>> completely and simply using line continuations.  For example:

<<widget "genericTaunt">>
\<<set _genericTaunt to [
	'You scruffy looking nerf herder',
	'Bantha poodoo',
	'E chu ta'
]>>
\<<= _genericTaunt.random()>>
\<</widget>>

I used leading line continuations there because they're generally more noticeable—meaning you're more likely to notice when you've missed placing one.

FURTHER SUGGESTION: You might want to place the taunt array on the setup object, so you're not recreating it every time you call the widget.  For example, in the StoryInit special passage:

<<set setup.genericTaunt to [
	'You scruffy looking nerf herder',
	'Bantha poodoo',
	'E chu ta'
]>>

Which allows your widget to become:

<<widget "genericTaunt">>
\<<= setup.genericTaunt.random()>>
\<</widget>>

 

Comments

Thanks for helping me understand that.  :-)