I think you may have to throw out the standard showing it to action (no great loss, as it’s barely implemented) and start with a new one.
These lines from the standard rules will cause problems:
Showing it to is an action applying to one carried thing and one visible thing.
[...]
Understand "show [someone] [something preferably held]" as showing it to (with nouns reversed).
Understand "show [something preferably held] to [someone]" as showing it to.
You could probably get around the [something preferably held] tokens by defining new “understand” lines, but if the action is defined as applying to a carried thing I don’t think there’s a way to get around it. (Well, I remembered that there’s an example that involves eating something without picking it up – but they do it with a procedural rule, which is a no-no.
So I’d start like this:
Understand the command "show" as something new.
Pointing it out to is an action applying to two visible things.
Understand "show [something] to [someone]" as pointing it out to.
Understand "show [someone] [something]" as pointing it out to (with nouns reversed).
[and may as well include the grammar for "point it out to"]
Understand "point [something] out to [someone]" as pointing it out to.
Report pointing it out to (this is the standard report pointing out to rule):
say "[The second noun] says 'Hmm, interesting [noun].'"
It sounds like you only want this to work for one NPC – which I don’t think is a great design choice, but can be done, since the original showing action is still there:
Before pointing something out to someone:
if the second noun is Jordan:
continue the action;
otherwise:
try showing the noun to the second noun instead.
There’s probably an easier way to have this happen only for Jordan, using the fact that more specific rules fire first, but this is the way I got it to work.
And a scenario:
[code]
Lab is a room. “There’s a fascinating gazebo here.” Jordan is a woman in Lab. Riley is a man in Lab. The gazebo is scenery in Lab. The whatsit is in Lab. The player carries a thingy.
Test me with “show Jordan gazebo/show gazebo to Riley/point whatsit out to Jordan/show whatsit to Riley/show Jordan thingy/show thingy to Riley”.[/code]
BTW, with this code “present” and “display” still go straight to the original showing action, so “PRESENT GAZEBO TO JORDAN” carries out an implicit take – you might or might not want to redefine the grammar for that. To my ears, those sound much more like something you do when you’re carrying something, as opposed to pointing out the scenery, so I think it might be OK to leave them as they are.