Interacting with things in transparent containers: An exception to basic accessibility rule (without deprecated procedural rules)

Authoring Inform 7
1

This seems so basic, I am embarrassed not to know this or be able to figure it out.

I have a person in car who should be able to be examined, but is being blocked by the Basic Accessibility rule. I don’t want to replace the rule, only to create an exception – if the container is not a car or not transparent, the rule should continue.

Without the rule, hitting or examining the sheriff looks like this:

>x sherrif’s car

It is dark green, mostly, with white doors, and a big black and gold badge on the door that says “Sierra County Sheriff.” It has red lights along the top. This is a big boxy car that looks kinda muscular and mean like the yellow dog.

“Well, pretty good, Bill. I can’t complain,” the Cat Lady tells the Sheriff. Then a frown crosses her face, “Oh except Oliver has an abscess. I have to take him to the kitty doctor next week.”

>x sheriff
Oh? Do you see that here?

Previously, I had:

Procedural rule when doing anything to sheriff when sheriff is visible and sheriff is in sheriffs_car:
	ignore the basic accessibility rule;

What is an elegant way to replace my old procedural rule without replacing the Basic Accessibility rule?

2

could the car just be open? You could suppress the “in which is the sheriff” with:

Rule for printing room description details of the sheriff's car:
omit contents in listing.
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3 
Rule for reaching inside when doing something with the sheriff and the sheriff is visible and the sheriff is in the sheriffs_car:
	allow access.

Or just

Rule for reaching inside the sheriffs_car:
	allow access.
4

Is there a reason not to just make the car transparent? The purpose of transparency is to be able to examine things inside it from outside, and vice versa.

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