RAIF FAQ
> Programming IF
> 4.8: What editors can I use to write IF?
Using a programmer's editor rather than a general-purpose text editor or a wordprocessor is a very helpful aid to writing IF. There are many text editors that are useful for writing IF. The following
list describes some of them. There are also some text editors and 'integrated development environments' specifically written to work with a particular IF language. These are also listed below. If you have any corrections or suggestions,
feel free to email them to me. Most of the following descriptions were
written by others; I'd like to thank everyone who helped me. However,
I edited them, so any incorrect statements are probably my fault.
- DOS/Windows (Win32-only (Windows 95, 98, and NT) unless specified)
- Inform
- IF-IDE
- Author: Mike Perlini
- http://www.geocities.com/mjperlini/
- IF-IDE is a text editor for Inform programmers.It features dynamic syntax highlighting, a semi-dynamic object, class and function browser and programmatic compilation and execution of z-code files.
- Inform Explorer
- Author: Paul de Valmency
- http://www.logicshopltd.co.uk/ie/
- Inform Explorer is a text editor written specifically to cater for Inform story source files. It features syntax highlighting and a visual representation of the objects and functions that make up the story file.
- Visual Inform
- Author: David Cornelson
- http://www.iflibrary.org/vinform/
- Visual Inform is an integrated development environment. "VI" is a complete and useable programming environment for developing Inform games in a more visual way than a traditional text editor. "VI" provides on-screen forms for defining the attributes, properties and descriptions for game objects and locations.
- Informer
- Author: William J. Schlaer
- /if-archive/programming/editors/InEdit10.zip
- Informer is a text editor that can generate Inform code for objects,
locations, routine, etc. It includes Inform syntax highlighting; it can
run the Inform compiler from within the editor and captures error
messages for viewing; can view code as graphical object tree or
location map.
- Inform IDE
- Author: Andrew Bault
- <http://www.tiac.net/users/ajb/software.html>
- Availability: free
- With Inform IDE, instead of creating
your program in a text editor as usual, you write code
in a "browser" which shows the relationship of pieces
of code to one another. You can import and export code with the
normal text version of Inform
source code. You can browse and modify objects and functions within
hierarchical or alphabetical trees.
- IMForm
- Author: Tim Middleton
- /if-archive/programming/editors/imfb01.zip
- IMForm is an ambitious and pretty IDE for Inform. However, it is
unfinished. It is not recommended for use in writing Inform games,
but is interesting to look at for anyone thinking about writing an
IF IDE. It has been uploaded with source code for anybody who
wants to to complete the project.
- TADS
- TADS File Editor
- Author: Satan's Mutt
- /if-archive/programming/editors/tfe.zip
- TFE is a conventional text editor with TADS syntax highlighting. It can run
the TADS compiler and capture the compiler output to an editor window.
- General
- Ultraedit
- Programmer's File Editor (PFE)
- Author: A. Phillips
- /if-archive/programming/editors/pfe101i.zip
(Win32)
- /if-archive/programming/editors/pfe101.zip
(Windows 3.1)
- Availability: freeware
- PFE is a programmer's text editor. It can run a compiler and capture
output from it. It has macros. It is highly configurable. It matches
paired characters. It remembers your cursor position in previous documents.
It has no syntax highlighting, however. It interacts well with other programs,
and can execute them, passing them the current file.
- Note: the author of PFE decided to stop developing PFE in October
1999; copies of PFE for both 32-bit and 16-bit Windows can now
be found at the IF-Archive.
- TextPad
- Author: ?
- <http://www.textpad.com/>
- Availability: $27 shareware
- Platforms: Win32 and Windows 3.1
- TextPad is a highly configurable text editor focused on programming.
Some of its features include automatic indentation; a changeable tab size
(4 or 8? The tab size Holy War continues...); word-wrap; macros (very handy
sometimes); a "clip library" for saving related macros (many user-created
clip libraries are available for download from the TextPad website); the
ability to compare two files (like Unix diff); a user-extensible Tools
menu where you can enter custom commands, such as calling a compiler
or syntax-checker; the ability to sort lines in a file according to
various user-definable criteria; line-break reformatting (a feature
that is immensely useful when using cross-platform text files); and
block highlighting and copying.
- FED
- Author: Shawn Hargreaves
- <http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/fed/>
- Availability: Free (open source)
- Platforms: MS-DOS, Linux
- FED is an open-source folding text editor. It has an intuitive
user interface, syntax highlighting, the ability to fold blocks of text
out of sight, multi-level undo and redo, flexible wordwrap,
binary and hex editing modes, macro recordings, and more.
Plus, it has a built-in tetris game and screensaver: what more do you
want?
- Configuration files for TADS and ALAN by Stephen Griffiths
are on the IF-Archive at /if-archive/programming/editors/alan.fed
and /if-archive/programming/editors/tads.fed
.
- Multi-Edit
- Author: American Cybernetics
- <http://www.amcyber.com/>
- Availability: $199 commercial
- Multi-Edit is a powerful text editor designed for use in multiple
languages. It is able to determine which of its customized tools
to use based on the language of your file. It integrates well with other
programming tools including version control. It has a powerful
extension language with the ability to call any DLL function including
the Win32 API. It also contains many more powerful text-editing
features. The $199 price includes a printed manual; you can
also just download the executables from $129. Douglas Harter's
Hugo template can be found on the IF-Archive at
/if-archive/programming/editors/hugo.tpt
.
- UED
- Author: ?
- <http://www.onlinebible.simplenet.com/> (see below)
- Platforms: MS-DOS
- Availability: freeware, probably
- UED (not to be confused with UltraEdit) is a simple yet powerful text
editor for DOS. It is distributed
with Online Bible (which is freeware and available from
the above URL). Since OB is freely redistributable, the author of
this article assumes that UED is also; anyone who wants a copy
can get it by emailing jonadab@bright.net, the
author of this article, if they do not wish to download Online Bible.
It is small: under 35K when compressed by ZIP. It has no IF-specific
features, but its nice features include the ability to word-wrap; configure
the margin; its speed (loads in no time flat even on an 8088);
fairly smart paragraph reformatting (treats the first line of paragraph
differently) that can be invoked on the current paragraph; the
ability to cut/copy/paste groups of lines, standard ranges, or
even rectangular blocks (very useful); loads up to nine files at
once and can switch between them easily; can put two files on screen
at once if desired. Its main limitation is that it can only
handle about sixty-thousand lines of text at any one time.
It does not come with any documentation, but (in the opinion of
the author of this article), it does not need any, as it has a
two minute learning curve and has no complicated commands.
- Microsoft Visual C++
- Author: Microsoft
- <http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/>
- Availability: expensive
- Microsoft Visual C++ is an expensive Integrated Development
Environment (IDE) for C++. It contains, among many other things,
an excellent programmer's text editor. However, I would never
recommend purchasing it solely for the text editor, as it is far
too expensive; if you already own a copy, however, you should give
it a try as an IF editor.
- CodeWright
- Author: Microsoft
- <http://www.premia.com/products/codewright/>
- Availability: $299 commercial
- CodeWright is a commercial Windows text editor with many features.
Though designed for editing text, it includes many powerful
automation features such as autocompletion and template languages.
Its features are mostly customizable.
- ScopeEdit
- Author: Loginov Software
- <http://www.loginov.com/>
- Availability: $79 commercial
- ScopeEdit is a unique text editor: it lets you structure your code
into descriptive folding trees. In addition, it has syntax
highlighting and a powerful macro language.
- Windows Notepad and DOS Edit
- Author: Microsoft
- Availability: comes with DOS/Windows
- Windows Notepad and DOS Edit should be preinstalled on
your DOS/Windows computer. They're usable, but a true
programmer's editor is much better.
- Macintosh
- ALAN
- Starter for ALAN
- Author: Tony Houlbrooke
- /if-archive/programming/alan/Starter.hqx
- Starter for ALAN is a Hypercard application that can help lay out
your location map and objects and then generate Alan source code from it.
It is not a real editor, though, and you need to edit the code with
an editor after creating a skeleton with this.
- TADS
- TADS Template
- Author: Jared L. Reisinger
- /if-archive/programming/tads2/utils/tads-template-0.9.sit.hqx
- TADS Template is a Hypercard application that can help lay out
your location map and objects and then generate TADS source code from it.
It is not a real editor, though, and you need to edit the code with
an editor after creating a skeleton with this.
- General
- MPW (Macintosh Programmer's Workshop)
- Author: Apple Computer
- <http://developer.apple.com/tools/mpw-tools/>
- MPW has syntax-coloring support for Inform. It's a rather nice
editor in its own right, and because it's also a Unix-like shell
environment, it's (almost) totally customizable.
- Alpha
- BBEdit and BBEdit Lite
- Author: Bare Bones Software
- <http://www.barebones.com/>
- Availability: $117 commercial (with some other deals); Lite version free
- BBEdit is a powerful, easy to use Mac text editor. It has many
features that make it easy to edit text, especially for programming
and writing HTML. The full version is commercial; a fully functional
"Lite" version is available for free and is an excellent text
editor in its own right (this article is being written in BBEdit
Lite). BBEdit Lite does not have as many advanced features as
the full BBEdit, though. (Do not confuse BBEdit Lite, which can be
found on Bare Bones' "Free Stuff" page, with the BBEdit Demo, which
is a crippled version of the full BBEdit and should only be used
to try out the full BBEdit's features for free.)
- Unix
- General (see also FED under Windows)
- emacs (GNU emacs and XEmacs)
- <http://www.emacs.org/>
- Platforms: Unix, Windows; others (such as Mac) in old versions
- Availability: GPL
- emacs shares with vi the dubious distinction of being the most
(in)famous UNIX text editor around. This reviewer doesn't know
the differences between GNU Emacs (the "official" Emacs, if such
a title can be claimed) and XEmacs off-hand, but
XEmacs has most of the features of GNU Emacs with possibly a few more.
Some of the features that make the various emacsen useful for
writing IF are color syntax highlighting; the fact that it is
completely user-configureable using the programming language Lisp;
the available emacs editing "modes" for TADS and Inform, which can
be found in the programming/editors directory of the IF Archive;
and many more features related to general text editing and programming
such as the ability to open multiple files and auto-indent, but listing
all of emacs' features would make this review far too long.
Suffice it to say that if you want it, emacs can probably do it.
And if you have a need that hasn't already been thought of, you can
take care of it yourself by writing some Lisp code. Though Lisp's
detractors (this reviewer among them) claim that Lisp stands for
"Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses" and find it hard to
read at best, some people (who must have masochistic tendencies)
like Lisp. If you happen to be one of them, great, and please don't
flame your humble reviewer too hard... :-) Seriously, though, you
don't have to know a thing about Lisp to *use* emacs, just to expand
its capabilities. You will probably find that emacs has all the
features you need. emacs works fine in text mode (aka console mode);
you can also use XEmacs in X Windows. emacs comes with complete
documentation. Rupert Lane's emacs mode for Inform can be found at
/if-archive/programming/editors/inform-mode.el
;
Stephen Granade's emacs mode for TADS is at
/if-archive/programming/editors/tads-mode.el
.
- vi and offspring
- <http://www.vim.org/> for vim
- <http://elvis.the-little-red-haired-girl.org/> for elvis
- Platforms: many
- Availability: varies
- vi is the original visual editor for Unix. There are many
clones and extensions of it, such as elvis and vim. Inform and TADS syntax highlighting files are included with the Vim distribution.
- Acorn RiscOS
- General
- !Zap
- Availability: Open Source
- <http://www.zap.uk.eu.org/>
- !Zap is the text editor of choice of Graham Nelson, the author
of Inform. It is highly configurable and editable.
Graham has written a syntax coloring file for Inform
for it.
- Amiga
- General
- GoldED
- Author: Dietmar Eilert
- <http://members.tripod.com/golded/golded.htm>
- The GoldED Studio editor core offers all the functions you can
expect from a modern editor. You get unlimited configurable undo
and redo, configurable syntax highlighting, templates, folding,
automatic backup creation, macro recording and support for a script
language (Rexx). Block functions include support for columnar blocks.
Advanced layout fuctions provide constant reformatting and word
wrap while you are typing. Drag and Drop is supported, so text can be
moved with the mouse. Scrolling is exceptionally fast even on
slow Amigas. Optional input aids include IntelliSense
(context-sensitive completion of words) and AutoCase (automatic case
correction). At the end of a day, you can use the session management
functions to save the current state of your work.
RAIF FAQ
> Programming IF
> 4.8: What editors can I use to write IF?