Is there a good Integrated Development Environment?
As we speak, there isn’t an Inform IDE which is generally agreed to be both reliable and effective, and which is in widespread use (though there are a few upcoming possibilities; see Richard Northedge’s Imaginate, Mike Perlini’s IF-IDE and Donnie Russell’s Implementor on the PC, and Scott Forbes’ Yonk on the Mac). Until that situation changes, we survive by using a ordinary text editor like NotePad (not a word processor — you don’t want any funny formatting characters mixed in with the program). Having said that, NotePad is not very powerful; an industrial-strength editor will do wonders for your Inform productivity, especially if it offers syntax colouring and the ability to compile and run Inform games without leaving the editor. Several good possibilities are listed in Roger Firth’s List of IF Editors, and in the RAIF FAQ. For the PC, TextPad is my recommendation, and here are instructions on how to harmonize it with Inform.
