iterating over tables with topic entries

Authoring Inform 7
1

I have a table with topic entries, like so:

Table of checkpoint scripts 
topic	rule
"charlie"	checkpoint charlie script rule

Is it possible to somehow iterate over this table and print out the topic entry as text? I’m guessing not, but I’m hoping you’ll prove me wrong.

2

No, because a topic column can include entries like

Table of Special Topics
topic
"rain/weather"
"light bulb" or "light/bulb"

(Both taken from the Merlin example in section 15.13 on Topic Columns)
Hence the impossibility of printing a topic as text.

3

Yeah. Unless you could just print out what you type in, so it would say “rain/weather”, etc… But that’s what I thought. Thanks.

4

I seem to run into no end of challenges using topics. Unfortunately, I can’t find any way to convert from strings to topics and vice verse. I’m hoping this is updated in an upcoming version sometime this year.

5

I know!

Maybe this can help?

6

The simple solution to printing topics from a table is to include a text column containing the canonical printing name of the topic.

Somewhat tedious, but it works today.