Skript: [Suggestion] New aliases in docs

[ShaneBeee]

Hello. So I talked to Snow about this today. He informed me that the new Skript for 1.13 does not include the aliases file like previous versions do to not wanting people to mess with them. Totally understandable. For myself, I don't generally change them, I use them more for reference.

So I had two suggestions.
1) Create a command, that a person could run, which would generate an uneditable aliases folder strictly for reference.
or
2) Add the new aliases to the docs.
He liked the docs idea and told me to suggest it on here. So there ya go :)

[TheBentoBox]

Forgot to comment but if aliases aren't gonna be easily accessible then this is definitely necessary, people shouldn't have to open the JAR to see the alias for something, hence the higher priority. And even if aliases do end up in the plugin folder (as a read-only version or otherwise), having them in the docs as well makes complete sense and should eventually happen regardless.

Another thing that could be nice, even if a bit strange, is a built-in Skript command to tell you the name of a specific material, e.g. /skript alias tool would send you the name of the item you're holding (same as send "%type of player's tool%" would), then /skript alias block (same as send "%type of player's target block%"), and maybe even /skript alias target for getting the Skript name of an entity (same as send "%player's target%"). Of course these could all be easily written by a user but they shouldn't have to write their own commands to easily interact with aliases. I think there's a lot of value to having aliases be accessible as possible both in-game and out.

[jaylawl]

Why will the aliases be hidden?

[TPGamesNL]

Isn't it more useful to add a config option (false by default) to enable custom aliases which will be generated when the config reloads and read from when the aliases are reloaded

[ShaneBeee]

Thanks @TheBentoBox
I do like that idea of the command.
With Minecraft adding SEVERAL new blocks/items, not having the aliases easily accessible is going to make things quite tricky. AND I KNOW you guys are going to get 10,000 people asking you where they are ;) I mean, I KNOW where to find them, but not everyone does.

I think the other reason I like the idea of them being in the docs, is because everything else is there, so it just makes sense to throw them in there as well.

[TheBentoBox]

For the sake of transparency, I'm not sure how I feel about the decision for aliases to be hidden in the JAR (not saying I don't). Understand, though, that there are big downsides as well as the upsides to letting users configure it. The big upside, of course, is the customization it allows, but the downside is that scripts can become non-transferrable because people will edit aliases and write stuff which relies on these new or updated personal aliases, and since they're so easy to edit there's no encouragement made for the user to contribute to the actual aliases repo to improve the aliases directly. Now, this main Skript repo uses the aliases repo as a sub-module so if anyone wants new/modified aliases, they could do so via a suggestion or PR on the aliases repo and everyone would benefit. Aliases are also now spread out across more files and are much more complicated and time-consuming to write while respecting cross-version support.

And, to be fair, well-written aliases shouldn't need to be referenced all that often. People shouldn't need to be asking how to refer to something or be forced to open the aliases files when a new version drops, they should just be able to use the name that makes sense and have it work. This is also why I've been adding more aliases for the sake of natural language flow, e.g. you can now do if player has 5 loaves of bread or give player 6 pieces of paper since the loaves/pieces parts are right in the aliases.

[bensku]

Per-script aliases are still (going to be) usable, and users can add custom aliases files to plugins/Skript/aliases folder. The reason for not allowing modifications to default aliases is that updates become quite painful once people start doing it. And I expect that we're going to need to push updates quite often to address bugs.

I suppose that we could extract aliases as "read-only" for viewing. This is not a replacement for proper documentation web page, but it avoids making the current situation worse.

@TPGamesNL It is possible to make Skript not load any aliases from jar, and grab them yourself to aliases directory. That is meant for aliases developers, but will be available in all Skript builds anyway.

[Anarchick]

It's possible to make /skript aliases update [version] and everyone will update their default aliases (If aliases are into .JAR I don't know if it's possible) ?