Remove "pair of" and "pairs of" wording from the boot clothing

[henry-thomson]

Summary

Content "Remove pair of and pairs of wording from the boot clothing"

Purpose of change

Lots of time is spent with inventory management, and "pair of" or "pairs of" makes searching for the right items difficult. Eg. socks are not sorted under S but under P, boots are not under B but under P as well. As such the items are basically split into two categories, items alphabetically sorted, and then a random clump of items also alphabetically sorted but with P at the start, which are all located somewhere in the middle of the item list.

My main wish is for the sorting to be unified, and simpler to find things you want, especially if a large portion of gameplay is spent on it. I am fully aware that adding "pair of" makes it explicit that the item represents three pairs of boots, and not three single right boots. I am not sure of the target audience for this explicitness outside of new players, as I would claim that after the first 5 hours of gameplay a player would know that there are no single socks or boots, and everything comes unified. However, I could be missing something, and therefore happy to change my mind. I do believe though that the value of explicitness is not large enough for the cost of added complexity in item sorting.

I am very happy to provide more reasons for the change, I did not wish to create a massive wall of text, if people already agree with it. AFAIK this change was already proposed, the PRs had no issues outside of being massive and not being worked on. #61400 #61421 #61220

Describe the solution

Remove "pair of" and "pairs of" from item names.

Describe alternatives you've considered

• Add "(pair)" at the end of the item name. This resolves the ordering issue, and makes it clear that the item is a pair. It is a very good solution, I did not choose it because I do not believe it is necessary that when you are wearing "boots" item that you know it is a pair since it is already implied. I am also not a fan of adding visual or wording clutter, as for example phones are now "smartphone (locked) (UPS) (unbrowsed)" and adding (pair) to more items in your inventory is going to pollute it even more. I do believe the decision is worth it with the phone example as it is clearly making a distinction between different types of items, but in the case of clothing the only value it provides is explicit information that you are wearing a pair of boots because this game does not model a single boot item. In terms of PR reviews and implementation work, it is also a bit easier to delete text than to also add it at the end the term, especially if it might cause hundreds, maybe thousands(?) of lines to be reviewed. I do believe though that if there is an item that truly needs to make it clear that it is a pair, then "(pair)" would be added, I am not ruling it out completely, just that for the majority of items I don't value it.
• Remove just the "pair of" keep "pairs of". The claim was that "3 boots" could cause confusion, however I am of the opinion that it is clear if a singular "boots" item represents a pair, then "3 boots" still represents "3 pairs of boots". This also does not resolve the issue of having disorderly item sorting.

Testing

Created a new world, went into house, saw socks instead of pair of socks and pairs of socks. Loaded up a previous save without the change, saw the same result as with the newly created world. I did encounter the "Stale data" warning, but I believe that is same as #80679 and therefore unrelated, as I encountered it without the boot change anyway.

Additional context

For now I have edited only the boots file as a proof of concept or an example that is easier to review. I would like to continue with the work, and ideally post 2-5 more PRs changing the items, so that it is easier to review. Unless, I am told to create one larger PR if there is a preference for that, open to discussion. I did notice that there is also "ankle socks" entry in the android and lang part of the repository, should I be changing those as well, or is that automatically generated?

[github-actions[bot]]

You are creating a pull request with the master branch as the head branch. This is completely fine if you plan to make contribution once or do not plan to do it often, but if you are interested in making multiple pull requests within a short span of time, this would prevent you from doing it comfortably. You may read https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/quickstart/contributing-to-projects#creating-a-branch-to-work-on for a typical workflow of contributing to a project on GitHub.

[PatrikLundell]

I agree with you that it's annoying to sort a lot of "random" stuff under "pair" rather than what they are. I constantly get caught by it for things that aren't really pairs, but actually single items (well, I get caught by it by socks too).

However, I don't like the solution of dropping the pair description for things that actually are two items completely, as you get the confusion about whether there are 2 gloves or 2 gloves (pair). I thus would suggest the (pair) suffix for when we're dealing with distinct items. Glasses, for example, are an intrinsic pair, so there's no risk of confusion (as the singular version is a monocle), and thus shouldn't be capable of causing confusion.

I can also mention that the risk of confusion isn't only for new players, but for returning ones as well. Someone who's put the game on hold for a year or two would be likely to not remember the details.

Reviewers really don't like huge PRs, because it takes a lot of time, it's boring, and the eyes glaze over when trying to process them. For the selfish PR maker (I'm not accusing you of being one: it's a general argument for anyone reading this), it also means reasonably sized PRs are more likely to be reviewed in a timely manner. Thus, splitting it up in chunks when reasonable is better, so one or a few files at a time, or one reasonably sized topic per PR is good.

[henry-thomson]

Not sure if it was a blocker, but seems that it was popular, so I updated the PR and changed it to (pair) instead

[Procyonae]

3 boots (pair) still seems a bit cursed but this feels worth it

[henry-thomson]

Are there any blockers that I should remove?

[github-actions[bot]]

Spell checker encountered unrecognized words in the in-game text added in this pull request. See below for details.

Click to expand

• jika-tabi (pair)
• jika-tabi sneakers (pair)

This alert is automatically generated. You can simply disregard if this is inaccurate, or (optionally) you can also add the new words to tools/spell_checker/dictionary.txt so they will not trigger an alert next time.

Hints for adding a new word to the dictionary

• If the word is normally in all lowercase, such as the noun word or the verb does, add it in its lower-case form; if the word is a proper noun, such as the surname George, add it in its initial-caps form; if the word is an acronym or has special letter case, such as the acronym CDDA or the unit mW, add it by preserving the case of all the letters. A word in the dictionary will also match its initial-caps form (if the word is in all lowercase) and all-uppercase form, so a word should be added to the dictionary in its normal letter case even if used in a different letter case in a sentence.
• For a word to be added to the dictionary, it should either be a real, properly-spelled modern American English word, a foreign loan word (including romanized foreign names), or a foreign or made-up word that is used consistently and commonly enough in the game. Intentional misspelling (including eye dialect) of a word should not be added unless it has become a common terminology in the game, because while someone may have a legitimate use for it, another person may spell it that way accidentally.

[czyjanek]

Ihmo, it should be like this: cord sandals 2 pairs of cord sandals

[harakka]

The tests aren't failing randomly, there are actual json problems you need to fix for this to be mergeable https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/actions/runs/15097758329/job/43962406648?pr=80962#step:19:3629

[henry-thomson]

I was aware had time only on the weekend, updated all.

[Maleclypse]

I was aware had time only on the weekend, updated all.

Thanks for your contribution! I didn't understand why you were doing this from the title but the summary was very solid.

[henry-thomson]

I didn't understand why you were doing this from the title

@Maleclypse I made a continuation of this PR in #81910 do you think "Unify "pair of X" to "X (pair)" in arms armor" would be better? Open to suggestions, as I agree it could be improved, but I don't have better ideas than what I already had, and I am not sure how to not make the name of the PR very long.

[Maleclypse]

I didn't understand why you were doing this from the title

@Maleclypse I made a continuation of this PR in #81910 do you think "Unify "pair of X" to "X (pair)" in arms armor" would be better? Open to suggestions, as I agree it could be improved, but I don't have better ideas than what I already had, and I am not sure how to not make the name of the PR very long.

It makes sense now and I've merged the second one :)