Taxonomy of a Rule

Throughout the Caster documentation, you will see references to rules, commands, specs, actions, extras, and defaults. These all refer to parts of a Rule, typically a Dragonfly MappingRule or a Caster MergeRule. Both are structured the same way, as depicted below.

• spec : This is what you say in order to invoke an action.
• action : This is what happens when you speak a spec. Examples include Dragonfly's Key, Text, and Function actions, or Caster's R, ContextSeeker, or AsynchronousAction actions.
• extra : A sub-component of a spec. Examples include Dragonfly's Dictation, IntegerRef, and Choice, or Caster's IntegerRefST and Boolean.
• default : A default value for an extra. Optional extras in a spec should have default values.
• command : The combination of a spec and an action. In MappingRules or MergeRules, these are key/value pairs, but a Dragonfly CompoundRule is also a command.
• rule : Any of the classes which extend Dragonfly's Rule class, but most commonly, MappingRule and MergeRule.