Printing articles with "printed name" substitutions ...

Authoring Inform 7
1

OK,

once again me struggling with English (as it is not my first language), grammer and Inform 7 :slight_smile:

A person has a name like Peter, Paul, Mary. If the person is unknown to the player I change the printed name to what would be used in a normal conversation as well if a name was not known:

Guy in a black shirt
Guy with the faded jeans
Lady with the freckles

Now in a room description this works fine as the game preludes this with A or An.

When I use that in a dialogue, however, like in:

   before the player asking an unknown person (called askee) about something:
      Say "[askee] looks at you, frowns and says 'Do I know you?'";
      rule fails;

Now, the “known” “unknown” status is toggled by an “introduce” action, in case you wonder :slight_smile:

The problem here is that Inform does not use “The” but rather the reply reads like:

Guy in a black shirt looks at you, frowns and says “Do I know you?”

It would be a better read if it was

The guy in a black shirt …

I have fiddled a bit with improper-named, proper-named and whatnot but I haven’t found a solution …

2

Try [The askee]. Inform should use the article if the person is not proper-named, which you can also toggle: “Now Peter is proper-named/Now Peter is not proper-named”

3

Exactly. Inform doesn’t use articles unless you tell it to: [noun], [the noun], [a noun], [The noun], [A noun].

4

You ask - you learn :slight_smile:

Thanks!

As a memo to myself: You have to do both - you have to set a person to be improper-named when not using her “real” name AND you have to add the article with the “variable” in Say [] to have “The unknown woman” appear as feedback.