Your main problem (besides an extraneous ‘now’ that was likely just a typo) seems to be that you want i7 to resolve “[a item]” only once; but actually i7 remembers that substitution and re-resolves it every time it prints that text. So it will only grab that value of ‘item’ (and any other bracketed substituions) at the time of printing, by which point it may contain ‘nothing’ if it’s a temporary variable.
It’s important to remember this about i7’s string substitutions, and I had this problem plenty, but I forget now how I solved it. Just now I scanned my code to see if I could find an example, but it’s too needle-in-a-haystack-ish for me to search out casually. I’m sure someone else will be able point the way toward a workaround with less hassle. But it’s definitely not a glitch.
Aha! I found this old thread about this very subject – this is probably where I originally learned the workarounds – including Juhana’s – myself. (Man when do I get my eidetic-memory implants – I was promised implants and flying cars.)
Out of curiosity: the above seems to imply that you are coding i7 on an Android tablet, although possibly that’s not what you meant, but if it is, I’d love to know what are your workflows/tools for doing this? Did you just install the command-line compiler and use a text editor? Or, is there some Android-based IDE available? I’ve been wondering how well I could transition from coding primarily on my netbook to doing it on my tablet.
There is a site called playfic. It allows you to write and test inform code and play other peoples stories. The only issue I have with using it that Android browsers are a bit of a Hobsons choice. As far as I can tell only Dolphin allows you to enter a tab directy in code, all the others use the tab key to move between windows.
I’ll have a look at the thread you suggested, thanks for the help.