Writing Rules for Bridge - Organizing the Rules Back

The language as defined so far provides for writing rules that can examine some number of qualities, make decisions based upon the values of those qualities, and perform some actions. But, there must also be some way to organize the rules. That is, there needs to be some way to associate rules which perform similar functions. For instance, all of the rules pertaining to the opening bid should be together, separate from the rules which perform the responder's second bid. To organize a set of rules, the language defines the concept of a group.

A group of rules consists of a purpose and its associated rules. The purpose is a one line description of the bidding situation addressed by the group. You have already seen what the rules themselves look like. To illustrate rule groups, here is a set of rules as they are displayed in the game's editor.

This is a set of rules for bidding a hand.
Rules name: Simple
File name: E:\bridgex\rbgb2.xml

      Opener examines hand before first bid
   Opener's first bid
      Responder reviews partner's first bid
   Responder's first bid
      Opener reviews partner's first bid
   Opener's second bid
      Responder reviews partner's second bid
   Responder's second bid
   Opener's left opponent's first bid
   Opener's right opponent's first bid

The first line indicates that this set of rules is used during the bidding process. The second line gives the name of the rules and the third line the name of the file where the rules are stored.

The remaining lines are the purposes of each group. You will notice that some lines are in plain text and are indented while other lines are in bold. The plain text lines represent groups that are used to review another player's bid. These groups should be used to set the values of qualities such as the best suit or the meaning of another player's bid. The bold lines are groups of rules used to make the player's bids.

The group's purpose describes the bidding situation where the group's rules will be used. The game keeps track of the bidding process and selects the appropriate rule group for each player's turn. The game keeps track of each player's turn and selects the appropriate group of rules for each bidding situation.