A vs The

Authoring Inform 7
1

Another quicky question. I can’t seem to work out when Inform chooses to use A vs when it will use THE.

EG:

[code]“A vs The” by Craig Peters

The white office is a room.

A blue desk is a supporter in the white office. “There is a blue desk against the wall, upon which is [the contents of the blue desk].”

A red book is on the blue desk.

An apple is on the blue desk.

The Holy Grail is on the blue desk.

Mary’s false teeth are on the blue desk.
[/code]

The following code will produce:

Now it doesn’t make much sense to describe the book and the apple as ‘the red book’ and ‘the apple’ when you’ve never seen them before. How do I get Inform to write ‘a red book’ and ‘an apple’ just like I initially described them?

2 
A blue desk is a supporter in the white office. "There is a blue desk against the wall, upon which is [contents of the blue desk]."

By not using “the” in the contents substitution line, you will get a list with “a” instead of “the”.

But you presumably want the Holy Grail to always be “the Holy Grail”. You can effect that by adding

The indefinite article of the Holy Grail is "the".
3

Aha! Thank you very much.

4

Another tip: If you include Plurality by Emily Short, you can (and grammatically, you should) use “[is-are]”, like this:

"There is a blue desk against the wall, upon which [is-are] [contents of the blue desk]."