Redirect "talk to someone about something" to "ask"

Unlike the example in the documentation, I would like to keep the existing “ask someone about something” setup, and simply make it possible to also “talk to someone about something”, which will be the same as “ask someone about something”. I’ve spent a while on such a simple thing and I’m stumped. Searched google and the forum, still can’t find anything. So time to hit the forum.

Here’s what I have so far;

I have bolded the two lines it has a problem with.
Regarding this line;
Understand “talk to [someone] about [text]” as talking about. Talking about is an action applying to one visible thing and text.
It complains that the “second thing” has the wrong value type. I don’t know why. I think [text] and “text” are clearly the same type of value, not sure how else to write it…

This is a bit of weirdness in Inform. While the token is [text], an action cannot apply to “text”, it must apply to “a topic”.

If you want it to be equivalent to asking, though, you can just Understand “talk to [something] about [text]” as asking it about.

The syntax for that is “applying to one visible thing and one topic.” See §17.5 of Writing with Inform on “The text token” (which is not the easiest place to find that! I’d been looking in the chapters on actions). And as that section says, the text will be get put into the value “the topic understood” (that’s what needs to go where you have “it” in “try asking the noun about it” etc.)

As it says in §17.5:

Also, you should give the action the name “talking to it about.” The “it” tells Inform where to expect the noun to be when you refer to the action elsewhere in the source code. So when you write:

Talking to it about is an action applying to one visible thing and one topic.

you can then write

Instead of talking to someone about something, try asking the noun about the topic understood.

and it will be understood.

Much appreciated guys. While my quick fix was the
Understand “talk to [something] about [text]” as asking it about.
line, it really was baffling me that I’d got as far as it understanding what I wanted but claiming that the “variable types don’t match.” Now I know it’s called a “topic” and I’ve added all this to my notes.