Roger Firth's IF pages
List of IF Editors
Roger Firth's IF pages | |
List of IF Editors | |
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You can, of course, use almost any file-editing program to create your IF games; at heart, little more than the ability to insert and delete text is of vital importance. However, there are certain operations which you'll find yourself performing repeatedly, and a program which provides specific assistance with those operations will quickly prove a great saver of time and temper.
We're talking here about two classes of program: the programmer's editor -- a regular text editor enhanced to display program-like text and handle programmer-like operations -- and the Integrated Development Environment (IDE), which collects within a single workspace: an editor, the compiler, the runtime interpreter and maybe a debugger. A programmer's editor is a general-purpose tool which can be taught the specifics -- what keywords to highlight, which character introduces a comment, how to run the compiler, and so on -- of almost any programming language. An IDE, on the other hand, is usually designed to deal with a single specific language; it comes complete with the necessary knowledge about that language, and will typically include aids to structured viewing and manipulation of the language's constructs (for example, showing all objects, all classes, all routines, etc).
This page collects information on a range of editors and IDEs appropriate for IF designers (there's also some information in the rec.arts.int-fiction FAQ). The list is selective -- especially on Windows it omits products which don't seem to offer any particular differentiation -- and includes only programs which are either free, or available as shareware within an arbitrary price limit of $50. In my opinion, these are the most important capabilities:
| Files | No limit on file size. Multiple open files. Split windows on same file. |
| Undo/Redo | Unlimited Undo and Redo. |
| Blocks | Indent and Unindent blocks of text. Comment and Uncomment blocks of text. |
| Case conversion | Convert upper- to lower-case, and vice versa. |
| Whitespace | Convert tabs to spaces, and vice versa. Strip leading and trailing spaces. Optionally make whitespace visible. Handle EOL characters for PC, Mac and Unix. Maintain current indentation after typing EOL. |
| Wordwrap | Optionally wrap long lines at right margin, maintaining current indentation. |
| Search and Replace | Match whole words. Match case. Support regular expressions (sophisticated wildcards). |
| Syntax colouring | Colour-code reserved words in IF language (requires syntax definition file,
downloadable from product's website or from IF Archive).
Various examples are available for
ALAN ( ),
Hugo ( ),
Inform ( ) and
TADS ( ). |
| Compile and Run | Within editor, compile current file with single keystroke and display errors. Similarly, run compiled version of current file in interpreter. |
| Spell-checker | Verify national language spellings. |
The editors listed below seem to support most of these requirements. The IDEs are usually less powerful in their editing capabilities, but may compensate for this with highly-focussed support for the language concerned.
| Programmer's Editors | ||||
| Alpha | $30 |   |
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Not studied in depth (but looks powerful). |
| AnyEdit | FREE |  |
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Pro: Includes auto-complete. Con: No word-wrap. No block Comment/Uncomment. No cross-platform EOL support. |
| BackEdit | FREE | |
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Not studied in depth. |
| BBEdit Lite | FREE | |
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Con: No syntax colouring or spell-checker -- included with full BBEdit ($179). |
| Code Genie | FREE | |
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Pro: Includes auto-complete. Con: Word-wrap doesn't indent. No split windows. No block Comment/Uncomment. No cross-platform EOL support. |
| ConTEXT | FREE | |
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Con: No split windows. |
| Cooledit | FREE |  |
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Con: Syntax colouring may not be extensible. |
| Crimson Editor | FREE | |
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Pro: Includes spell-checker. Con: No split windows. |
| EditPad Pro | $40 | |
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Pro: Includes spell-checker. Con: No split windows. No visible whitespace. No auto-indent. |
| EditPlus | $30 | |
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Pro: Includes spell-checker. No obvious disadvantages. |
| Emacs (+clones) | FREE |  |
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Pro: Power tool for experts. Con: Some versions have only command-line interface. |
| FED | FREE | |
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Pro: Supports folding. Con: Clunky Windows interface. Weak on features. |
| FTE | FREE | |
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Pro: Supports folding. Probably quite powerful. Con: Clunky Windows interface. |
| GWD Editor | $29 | |
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Pro: Includes spell-checker. Con: No split windows. No block Comment/Uncomment. Word-wrap doesn't indent. |
| IF Builder | FREE | |
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Under development, but usable. |
| JEdit | FREE | |
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Not studied in depth (but looks powerful). Dunno about compile-and-run support. |
| KWrite | FREE | |
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Pro: Includes spell-checker. Con: No compile-and-run. |
| MED | $30 | |
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Con: No split windows. No block Comment/Uncomment. Word-wrap doesn't indent. |
| mi | FREE | |
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No additional information available. |
| NEdit | FREE | |
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Not studied in depth (but looks powerful). |
| Pepper | $25 | |
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Not studied in depth (but looks powerful). Windows 2000/XP only. |
| PSPad | FREE | |
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Not studied in depth (but looks powerful). |
| SETedit | FREE | |
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Not studied in depth. Looks clunky, but may appeal to Borland Turbo Pascal/C/C++ programmers. |
| SourceEdit | FREE | |
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Pro: Includes auto-complete. Con: No word-wrap. |
| SubEthaEdit | FREE | |
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Pro: Includes spell-checker. Con: No compile-and-run. No case conversion. No tab-space conversion. No visible whitespace. No regular expressions. |
| syn | FREE | |
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Con: No word-wrap. No split windows. |
| Synth | FREE | |
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Not studied in depth. |
| TextMate | $39 | |
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Not studied in depth (but looks powerful). |
| TextPad | $29 | |
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Pro: Includes spell-checker. Con: No block Comment/Uncomment. |
| TextWrangler | FREE | |
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Not studied in depth (but looks powerful). |
| UltraEdit | $35 | |
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Pro: Includes spell-checker. Includes auto-complete. Con: Word-wrap doesn't indent. |
| vi (+clones) | FREE | |
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Pro: Power tool for experts. Con: Some versions have only command-line interface. |
| Zap | FREE | |
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For Acorn's RISC OS. No information available. |
| Zeus | $40 | |
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Not studied in depth (but looks powerful). |
| General IF IDEs | ||||
| Imaginate | FREE | |
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Under development, but usable. |
| Implementor | FREE | |
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Pro: Small and fast. Includes spell-checker. Con: No word-wrap. |
| ALAN IDEs | ||||
| ADE/W | FREE | |
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Requires an external editor. |
| Inform IDEs | ||||
| IF-IDE | FREE | |
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No longer being developed or supported -- use at your own risk. |
| Inform Explorer | FREE | |
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No longer being developed or supported -- use at your own risk. |
| Informer | FREE | |
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No longer being developed or supported -- use at your own risk. |
| Jif | FREE | |
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In Java. Under development, but usable. |
| Visual Inform | FREE | |
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No longer being developed or supported -- use at your own risk. |
| Yonk | FREE | |
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Under development, but usable. |
| TADS IDEs | ||||
| Plugh | FREE | |
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No longer being developed or supported -- use at your own risk. |
| TADS Workbench | FREE | |
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Part of TADS. Supports various compilation and run modes. Includes powerful debugger. Requires an external editor. |
| TFE | FREE | |
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No longer being developed or supported -- use at your own risk. |
My personal recommendations (for Windows): Of the Freeware editors, SourceEdit is definitely worth looking at, also Implementor. You'll find that a good Shareware editor is worth the money: I've used TextPad very happily for a number of years, but I think that it's probably bettered by EditPlus; both of these editors have a sensible try-before-you-buy policy.
Please send corrections and comments to roger@firthworks.com.