Force Inform to choose a verb in an assertion

Authoring Inform 7
1

I’ve been having a problem while translating Inform to French. Here is the code that cause it: must have accessible the noun rule response (A) is ("[Tu] ne [peux] rien faire [si tu] [ne tiens pas] [the noun].". In this piece of code, Inform thinks the verb is “have”, where it should be “is”, and therefore doesn’t understand that this assertion is supposed to change the text of a response.

Is there a way to force Inform to pick the correct verb? I tried to put brackets at different places in the assertion to indicate the correct verb to Inform, with no success.

Here is another example. The French equivalent of “a supporter” is “un support”, so this code in English: The table is a supporter in the kitchen. should be the same as: La table est un support dans la cuisine. However, Inform thinks the verb is “support” where it should be “est”, so it creates a thing called “dans la cuisine” which is is on a supporter called “la table est”.

Is there a solution? Thanks a lot!

2

No. You have to address this by choosing names that don’t contain verbs. I like to use long hyphenated names: instead of defining a “must have accessible noun rule”, define a “must-have-accessible-noun rule”.

The second problem is tougher. Inform may not be cope with a language where a kind name looks like a verb. You’d have to file that as a bug.

3

Thanks for the answer.

I can’t change the name of the rule though, because it’s a rule that is written in Locksmith, and which contains a response that the French Language extension is supposed to translate. I guess the names of the two rules that cause this problem have to be changed in the next release of Inform?