Way to abbreviate "the current interlocutor"?

Authoring Inform 7
1

I’m trying to find a way to save some typing in a game with lots of conversation. I am typing lots of “[otherwise if the current interlocutor is George]”

I usually will make substitutions for stuff like this, such as:

To say p: say "[paragraph break]"
Which allows me to type things like. “And my paragraph has ended.[p]In this new paragraph…”

I was trying to make a similar shortcut with things like:

To say intG: say "[if the current interlocutor is George]"

Which doesn’t work since that whole phrase is not a specific thing to say.

Is there a way I can dip into I6 maybe and create shortcuts for at least the phrase “the current interlocutor is” so I can save some typing and space for phrases like: "[if int George]George says, 'I'm the current interlocutor!'"

?

2 
To decide if (Bob - a person) is speaking:
   If the current interlocutor is Bob, decide yes;
   Decide no.

Later...
"[if george is speaking]....[end if]"

I may have the syntax of the to decide phrase wrong. Resist the urge to abbreviate.

3

Looks good to me.

4

This works awesomely. Thank you! I don’t know if it’s just that particular phrase “current interlocutor” that irks me, but this technique will streamline a lot of things.

What I did was make one of these phrases for each character. Now I can write “[if George is int]…”

5

Blecki’s example already handles each (person) character. (It may not have been obvious, but “Bob” in his code sample was a local variable, not a person object.)

6

Alternatively, you could define a new adjective that captures the condition: Definition: a person is int if he is the current interlocutor.

7

Really? I was like “I have no character named Bob…” so . gnrgh.

8

In most programming languages, I avoid one-character variables like rotten fish, because they’re too easy to confuse with punctuation symbols. But in Inform, the code is verbose and has few symbols, so I always use single-letter variables for locals and arguments. Thus:

To decide whether (P - person) is speaking: