Paragraph breaks after descriptions of objects.

Authoring Inform 7
1

Both of these will produce exactly one paragraph break on examining the object–

An iron bar is here. The description is "It's like any other iron bar you've seen." An industrial strength magnet is here. The description is "It's like any other industrial strength magnet you've ever seen. ".

…despite the spaces at the end of the second description.

I expected the second one to produce no break at all. So is it true that the rule for examining automatically produces a paragraph break (even if no punctuation actually ends the description)?? Which differs from action rules, which do so only when there is sentence-ending punctuation at the end of the quoted text??

Thanks

2

Yes. From the Standard Rules:

Carry out examining (this is the standard examining rule):
	if the noun provides the property description and the description of the noun is not "":
		say "[description of the noun][line break]";
		now examine text printed is true.

If you don’t like this behaviour, you could replace the rule.

1 Like
3

Thanks, Jrb,

Actually, it’s just fine with me. Saves me the headache of having to go through each object description to make sure if my '[if…]'s (when they do not apply) at the ends of them are not allowing a paragraph break.

Thanks

4

That’s good. I’ve been thinking about how you’d change it to give a line break only after “.” or “!”, and the best I can come up with is clunky (though I think it would work).

This is the new standard examining rule:
	if the noun provides the property description and the description of the noun is not "":
		let X be the substituted form of the description of the noun;
		say X;
		if X exactly matches the regular expression ".*(\.|\!)":
			say line break;
		now examine text printed is true.
The new standard examining rule is listed instead of the standard examining rule in the carry out examining rules.
5

As an aside: in general the principle of getting a line break when text ends in “.” or “!” only applies to text which is written explicitly in a say statement (see Section 2.3 of Writing with Inform). So

Report fooing:
     say "You foo wildly."

produces a line break, but

Report fooing:
     let X be "You foo wildly.";
     say "[X]".                               [or: say X.]

doesn’t. (There is no “.” or “!” inside the say statement itself, only in the text substitution.)

6

Thank you very much, Jrb, for your extra effort.