Pronouns for User Profiles

[noahgibbs]

As discussed with @jandrieu (here: WebOfTrustInfo/vRWOT_SkotOS#1) and @saraht45 and @ChristopherA on Signal, we want to allow users to customise their pronouns beyond the current he/she choices.

Joe says:

Individuals should be able to specify the pronouns they wish the system to use for themselves (and those pronouns should be evident when viewing their profile).

The DGD engine should use these pronouns instead of basing pronouns on a gender setting.

Sarah has begun work here: WebOfTrustInfo/vRWOT-Doc#1

Here is what we have tentatively decided for fixing the problem (feel free to edit/change as we go):

• We will add Merry-level properties to override pronouns with arbitrary strings
• We will remove (?) the gender enum and genderstring as going concerns - gender-specific functionality in e.g. UrMale and UrFemale will be moved to an UrMainBody or removed completely

Open question: will we merge this system into base SkotOS, or will it be RWOT-specific? These changes will be pretty far-reaching.

Here are methods, etc. we'll need to change or remove:

• query_male, query_female and query_neuter
• set_gender, currently used by a couple of SAM tags (create-chatter, create-detached-body)
• the base:gender property - remove it
• the base:genderstring property - freeform, or remove it?
• data/vault/SID/Base/Misc.xml and its duplicate use things like query_gender just to set up their XML properties; this will need to change but will probably be fairly easy.

Here are areas where SkotOS uses gender that may need to be examined or changed (feel free to edit this description to add/change/remove them):

• skoot/lib/living/gender.c - this is where basic properties like base.possessive and base.nominative are exported, as well as exporting the (enumerated) gender; this will want to check for Merry overrides and return the correct new pronouns
• skoot/usr/SkotOS/sys/npc-brains.c - has an is_naked that checks gender; I don't see anything using is_naked and maybe we'll just remove it
• many places check for "neuter" to mean "don't display a gender" e.g. skoot/data/vault/Neoct/Staff/Verbs/%2Binventory.xml with genderstring and skoot/usr/TextIF/cmd/debug.c with query_neuter, and usually show a gender string; I think we can probably remove those references or show one pronoun, though. cmd/debug in particular will need to change several things it displays, but it's also something we can change freely.
• the TextIF parser, in usr/TextIF/obj/user.c and usr/SkotOS/lib/noun.c, remembers the last "he", "she" and "it" referred to so you can "snicker at butler and wink at him" or similar, presumably. That functionality will need to be changed significantly or removed if we don't have a genderstring, or even if the genderstring is freeform.
• data/vault/Lib/echo.xml - currently checks gender in some cases to say "a male voice" or "a female voice".
• various Merry objects use base:gender and/or base:genderstring -- cats, food, UrClothing, some old Bilbo code in RefreshDB.

Est: 2 more days, ish, for my DGD changes and for some testing. This will probably also want some testing from @saraht45.

[saraht45]

Open question: will we merge this system into base SkotOS, or will it be RWOT-specific?

In my opinion, these changes should be merged into base SkotOS. If a developer wants to write a script that autosets pronouns based on gender, it can be done easily enough.