Writing with Inform, 17.10:
What controls whether “you” or “yourself” is printed? If I say something like “Not while [the person asked] [is-are] holding the hot potato” (using Plurality by Emily Short), I would expect “you”, but instead I get “yourself”.
This doesn’t directly answer your question, but if you use Assorted Text Generation by Emily Short as well then you can say “Not while [you or or the person asked] [is-are] holding the hot potato.” – Although that yields “you is holding the potato.” Hm.
OK, let’s just rip off some code from Assorted Text Generation and add something to handle [is-are] in one fell swoop:
[code]To say you or (culprit - a person) is-are:
if the culprit is the player, say “you are”;
otherwise say “[culprit] [is-are]”.
To say you or the (culprit - a person):
if the culprit is the player, say “you are”;
otherwise say “[the culprit] [is-are]”.
To say you or a/an (culprit - a person):
if the culprit is the player, say “you are”;
otherwise say “[a culprit] [is-are]”.[/code]
Then I think you can say “Not while [the person asked is-are] holding the hot potato”; note that there’s only one pair of brackets. (And note that you have to sentence-case it by hand if it needs to be capitalized.)
Actually what is printed is, I think, either “yourself” or “You” (with a capital Y). It prints “You”, if you precede “person asked” with a capitalized article ("[The person asked]" or"[A person asked]" rather than “[the person asked]” or “[a person asked]”).
You want Inform to say “you” when the player is the subject of the sentence and “yourself” when its an object of the sentence. The subject in an English sentence often is the first word of the sentence, and in such cases could be recognized by the capital letter. Obviously, there are many exceptions to that rule.
I suppose I’d use something like:
"Not while [if the person asked is the player]you[otherwise][person asked][end if] [is-are] holding the hot potato."
or, if the same problem crops up att several places:[code]Instead of singing: say “Not while [you or the person asked] [is-are] holding the hot potato.”
To say you or the person asked: say “[if the person asked is the player]you[otherwise][person asked][end if]”.[/code]
Ok, I can use Plurality’s built-in phrase to handle the is-are problem. So
To say you or the (culprit - a person):
mark the culprit in output;
if the culprit is the player, say "you";
otherwise say "[the culprit]".
To say You or the (culprit - a person):
mark the culprit in output;
if the culprit is the player, say "You";
otherwise say "[The culprit]".
That should do what I need.
You versus Yourself would be a great matchup. Good existential implications, too.
Some additional detail about this issue can be found at The printed name of the player, "you" vs "yourself".