Rich clicking and selecting Give To will equip the item (if possible). To avoid this, you can drag and drop the item to the character's portrait, or open 2 inventory windows to drag and drop between.
The maps in the BF are randomly generated, so zoom was not implemented.
For Rupert's speech, they may have been planning to only let him teach you after completing the quest, and then changed their minds without changing the reply. Due to the cost of translating, the number of lines in the game had to be limited. There are a couple other places in the game where NPCs can mention things that have not happened if you miss something or explore one area before another.
