[I7] identifying things without using the printed name

Authoring Inform 7
1

Hi

I have some slightly broken thing in my wip, apparently, but I can’t tell which one.
When I use Property Checking my Emily Short it prints this:

...
say yes or no has no description.

*** Run-time problem P47 (at paragraph 1 in the source text): Phrase applied to an incompatible kind of value.

self has no description.
...

If I just iterate over all things and print the names of them I get the same problem, so I’m guessing there is an item somewhere that has an unprintable name… but which one? It could be something in an extension I guess. I can tell the location ot the offending thing is “nothing”.

I can “cast” the printed name to indexed text and recognize it - it has 117 characters…

In general, it would be really helpful if there were a way to print the name of the thing as it’s defined in the source rather than “the printed name” - is there one?

2

Uh… don’t know why I did not check this. Good thing, asking for help.

You can do this to repeat the issue:

include Conversation Package by Eric Eve. 
include Property Checking by Emily Short.
the demo is a room.

So it’s something in Conversation Package…

3

Yeah, ok, nailed it.

The culprit is “self-suggestion” in conversation suggestions by Eric Eve, the printed name of which is

The printed name is "[it-them of the current interlocutor][if the current interlocutor acts plural]selves[otherwise]self[end if]"

only when you iterate over things like that the current interlocutor is nothing. OK, not my bad.

But my question remains: is there any way to print the original name (“self-suggestion”) rather than the printed name?

4

Which versions of the extensions you have?

Not sure, but I think the information about the object’s name used in the code is lost when it’s compiled to a story file.

5

Yep, it’s lost. My debugger had to go to other files to get it.

6

Yeah, that’s what I thought. Pity that.

@juhana, to answer your question: I had these version of extensions:

Standard Rules version 2/090402 by Graham Nelson
Property Checking version 4 by emily short
Conversation Package version 2 by Eric Eve
Conversation Nodes version 6 by Eric Eve
Conversation Suggestions version 5 by Eric Eve
Conversation Responses version 6 by Eric Eve
Conversational Defaults version 2 by Eric Eve
Plurality version 9 by Emily Short
Conversation Framework version 10 by Eric Eve
Epistemology version 6 by Eric Eve
…
using Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD

but never mind, I know it’s nothing to worry about. Thanks!