Inform Edit

Amendments | Installation | Notes | Conversion Issues | Known Problems | Suggestions Wanted

Version 2.2 - 21st January 2000

Inform Edit is a simple text editor written specifically to cater for Inform story source files, making the job of creating and amending story files easier by the use of colour-coded text and a visual representation of the objects and functions that make up the story file:

The current version supports the following features:

• Colour-coded text for normal text, comments, keywords and identifiers.
• Text is colour-coded 'on the fly'.
• User-definable font and font size.
• User-definable text and background colours.
• Usual editor functions, such as Cut, Copy and Paste, and Find.
• Work in Full View (all source displayed in main window) or Modular View (only one object's source is displayed in main window).
• Class/object/location hierarchy display (only in Modular View).
• Relative locations of objects are replaced with absolute locations (e.g. Object -> Car_Keys; (with -> referring to the previous level 1 object of 'Car') replaced with Object Car_Keys Car;). This is done because working in Modular view, the '->' loses its meaning.
• Compile and run options.

Future enhancements may be made to include the following:

• User-definable keywords.
• Help Text (you're on your own, for now!).
• Movement of objects from one initial location to another (by drag and drop).
• Movement of objects from one class to another (by drag and drop).
• Movement of sub-classes from one class to another (by drag and drop).
• Print and print preview with formatting options.
• Updating tree view information as and when the object's main definitions are changed in code.
• Object Wizard allowing a fuller definition of a new object using a template.
• Copying modules via the tree view.
• Search across modules.
• Find All results displayed in tree view (i.e. all modules in which the search criteria was found).
• 'Include' files to be loaded when loading a source file (user prompted first) and included in tree view (not available in full view mode) so that 'huge' games can be worked on at the same time.
• Find and Replace feature.

Amendments

Installation

• If you have already installed an earlier version of Inform Edit, then download InformEdit2200Upd.ZIP (337k).
• If you already have MSVBVM50.DLL on your system then download InformEdit2200Partial.ZIP (1340k).
• If you do not have MSVBVM50.DLL then download InformEdit210Full.ZIP (2147k).
• Unzip the downloaded files into a temporary directory.
• Run Setup.exe and follow on-screen prompts.

Notes

When loading Story files created outside of Inform Edit, Inform Edit may make amendments to ensure that it will compile cleanly when saved.

The changes that may be made are:

• The source will be split into modules (which means that some or all lines will not be where they were originally) thus:
  • Definitions (anything prior to the first Class or Object definition, plus any Constant or Global declarations or Compiler Directives found elsewhere in the file).
  • Classes
  • Objects
  • Functions
  • Grammar Extensions (any non-object code found after the 'Include "grammar.h" line, as well as any Verb or Extend lines).
• Objects without a textual name (i.e. in quotes) are given one.
• Objects' initial locations are changes to be absolute if they are relative (see Conversion Issues, below).

Conversion Issues

Inform allows the programmer to specify the initial locations of objects in one of two ways:

Relative

Putting '->' between the object declaration and the object's name indicates that this object will start 'inside' the previous 'stand-alone' object (i.e. one not defined inside another).

Putting '-> ->' between the object declaration and the object's name indicates that this object will start 'inside' the previous object that was defined 'inside' another 'stand-alone' object. This may not be the object defined immediately before this object, which can sometimes cause confusion (especially with Inform newcomers).

e.g. from the Inform Designer's Manual:

Object "bucket" ...
Object -> "starfish" ...
Object -> "oyster" ...
Object -> -> "pearl" ...
Object -> "sand" ...

(where the bulk of the definitions are here abbreviated to "..."), sets up the tree structure 

     "bucket"
	!
    "starfish"> "oyster"> "sand"
		   !
		"pearl"

Absolute

Inform also allows for absolute definition of an object's initial location by putting the name of the location after the object's textual short name.

e.g., the above example can be defined as:

Object bucket "bucket"...
Object starfish "starfish" bucket...
Object oyster "oyster" bucket...
Object "pearl" oyster...
Object "sand" bucket...

As Inform Edit allows the author to work at the object level, the '->' loses its meaning because the previous objects are not visible. Because of this, when Inform source is imported, all '->' are converted to absolute location names.

Known Problems

• Inform Edit will try to close down the DOS box used to run the compiler. However, if the compiler is one of the DOS applications (i.e. Inform.exe) the window cannot be shut down, resulting in multiple DOS windows on the task bar. If at all possible, you should use Infrmw32.exe as this is a Windows program (even though it runs in a DOS box!), and does close down successfully.
• Quoted text is 'Normal' text (default colour of blue), and when amending quoted text that has been split over more than two lines, the amended line is re-parsed as if it were not in quotes. When this happens, pressing F5 to refresh the display clears the problem.
• On importing some source files, the characters used to terminate lines are not always correct and, although Inform Edit tries to correct this, it sometimes fails to do so correctly, and the display is full of RTF codes. Sometimes running the source file through another text editor (Wordpad, say) cures this problem.
• When at the end of the last line of source, pressing Enter does not allow you to add a new line. To get around this, type one or two characters for the next line, back up to the beginning of these characters and THEN press Enter.

Suggestions Wanted (email:paul@jcls.freeserve.co.uk)

Please feel free to report any problems that you may experience with Inform Edit, as well as any ideas that you'd like to see in an editor for Inform.

Enjoy.

Paul de Valmency

Inform Edit is distributed as Freeware, however full copyright is retained by the Author.