Editors

[Zach Flynn]

So, just out of complete curiousity. What text editor do all of you use
to write your games? Recently, I've found that my favorite one is
KWrite, part of the K Desktop Enviroment. It has great syntax coloring,
as well as the ability to shrink the definition of the object to just
the first line. So,

Object somestuff "Really Amazing" room
with description
"great thing.",
name 'really' 'amazing',
has static;

becomes:

+Object somestuff "Really Amazing" room

Then click the little + and the whole thing inflates again. Pretty nifty.

-Zach

[Felix]

KWrite? C'mon, Emacs rulez :D

[Zach Flynn]

Felix wrote:
> KWrite? C'mon, Emacs rulez :D
>

emacs is cool for most text editing, but are you using some add-on or
something? Because the coolest thing about KWrite is that I don't have
to scroll through all the lines. I just close down all the little
Objects and Functions and move to the ones I want to modify. It's cool
and me like. But perhaps some emacs modification could make it better....

-Zach

[BrettW]

> emacs is cool for most text editing, but are you using some add-on or
> something? Because the coolest thing about KWrite is that I don't have
> to scroll through all the lines. I just close down all the little
> Objects and Functions and move to the ones I want to modify. It's cool
> and me like. But perhaps some emacs modification could make it
> better....
>
> -Zach

Emacs (and Xemacs) can do all that via folding. It can also hide parts of
your buffer (file) so you can ignore all the clutter (which sounds the
same but isn't: one collapses the file, another hides parts of it).

I'm an Xemacs man. The TADS support is a little old, but it works okay.

I figure, to each their own.

BrettW

[Nikos Chantziaras]

Zach Flynn wrote:
>
> So, just out of complete curiousity. What text editor do all of you use
> to write your games? Recently, I've found that my favorite one is
> KWrite, part of the K Desktop Enviroment. It has great syntax coloring,
> as well as the ability to shrink the definition of the object to just
> the first line. So,

> [...]

> Then click the little + and the whole thing inflates again. Pretty
> nifty.

Hm? Has KWrite TADS support? I had to write my own XML syntax definitions
for TADS (for kate though, not kwrite, as the latter has been obsoleted by
kate).

[Kevin Venzke]

"Zach Flynn" <purple...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:BBzIe.2880$HM1.621@okepread03...

> So, just out of complete curiousity. What text editor do all of you use to
> write your games? Recently, I've found that my favorite one is KWrite, part
> of the K Desktop Enviroment. It has great syntax coloring, as well as the
> ability to shrink the definition of the object to just the first line. So,

I use EditPad Lite. Do you suppose I'm missing out on anything?

Kevin Venzke

[Ian Haberkorn]

I use JIF by Alessandro Schillaci. It's in Java, written for Inform and
does much more than just handle the source text. Recommended!

Ian

[Michael Coyne]

On Thu, 04 Aug 2005 18:50:51 -0700, Zach Flynn said to the parser:

> So, just out of complete curiousity. What text editor do all of you use
> to write your games?

I'm using gvim, because I think vi is great.

The other advantage is that gvim is available on every platform I use, and
performs much the same on all of them.

--
Michael Coyne
http://turthalion.blogspot.com

[drus...@wotmania.com]

Zach Flynn wrote:
> So, just out of complete curiousity. What text editor do all of you use
> to write your games?

A few years ago I needed a lightweight, fast and portable editor, so as
an educational exercise I wrote Implementor in C. It's mostly designed
for IF projects, but also works with other languages; in the later
stages I used it to write itself. It retains the layout of open files
between sessions, which I find very convenient, and does
spell-checking. It's not feature-rich, but I use it.

http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXprogrammingXeditors.html

[A Ninny]

This is probably a good place to post an article I wrote for the
newsletter of the AIF community. It is a review of two text editors:
Crimson Editor 3.7 and Imaginate 1.5. This article contains no adult
(AIF) content. The text of the article follows.

* * *

Software Review—Programming File Editors by A. Ninny

Authors who write IF in object-oriented programming languages (such as
TADS or Inform) can be greatly aided in this task by a good text editing
program. As Lucilla Frost so eloquently put it in her article about
TADS and ADRIFT, “trying to write TADS in Notepad is a recipe for
suicide.” Common features that make text editors far superior to
notepad include multi-document support, line numbering, indentation and
text formatting based on content. In this article, I will review two
very different freeware editors: Crimson Editor 3.7, which is an
all-purpose programming file editor; and Imaginate 1.5, an editor
specifically designed for editing IF code.

* Crimson Editor 3.7 *
(screenshot located at
http://newsletter.aifcommunity.org/images/crimson.jpg)

Pros:
Crimson Editor is a general-purpose text editor that is equally at home
with IF as it is with HTML or C or any other ASCII-based programming
language. It provides tabbed multi-document access along with a handy
project navigation that makes it very easy to jump from one file to
another. It automatically remembers what files were open and reopens
them all (to the last viewed line of code) every time you start the
software, making it extremely fast to jump into your project without
browsing through your hard drive for your files. It provides built-in
code formatting for TADS 2 (written by me and contributed to the
software’s publisher before the current release) and Inform, but
currently lacks formatting for TADS 3.

Creating and modifying formatting schemes is easy as the scheme files
are all text files, but instructions as to how to do it lack detail.
Crimson Editor comes with a built-in spell checker that highlights
misspellings as you type, a feature that I consider essential. The
spell checker is far from perfect, but has still saved me a ton of time
in searching for misspelled words.

Crimson’s search feature is also extremely powerful. It can search for
a string of text in all the files in a particular folder at once, and
provides in-context results to its search in a separate pane. If you
double-click on the search result it will take you directly to the line
in the file where the string was located.

Brace and parentheses matching is extremely straightforward in CE. All
you need to do to find a matching brace is click next to either an open
or close brace (or parenthesis) and its pair will be highlighted
instantly. You can also right-click to tell CE to select the entire
block of code contained by a brace pairing.

Another benefit to CE is that it does not lock files. Instead, if an
outside source changes the content of a file open in CE, it will ask the
user if he or she wishes to load the new version. This makes it
extremely useful for annotating ADRIFT transcripts during beta-testing.
Crimson Editor is also extremely lightweight. The download is 1.2 MB,
small enough to fit on a floppy diskette.

Cons:
The main negative about Crimson Editor is its poor documentation,
although peer support is available on CE’s web site. The publisher of
CE is not a native English speaker, so the help files are both minimal
and cryptic. There are also a few bugs in the program, one being that
if you try to split a window vertically you cannot scroll one half
independently of the other.
Another item on my wish list for CE is in-string formatting. A common
construct in TADS code, in-string methods
(property = “text text <<self.variable ? “variable is true” : “variable
is nil”>> text text. ”;)
are those within the << >> that reference some other piece of code. It
would be helpful for the text editor to recognize that << >> is a signal
that what comes within is not part of the string, but is, instead,
something else.

Aside from these few small issues, CE is solid, easy to use and fast.

* Imaginate 1.5 *
(screenshot located at
http://newsletter.aifcommunity.org/images/imaginate.jpg)

Pros:
Imaginate is a different kind of animal altogether. It is specifically
tailored to IF authoring and has many features that are of exclusive use
to IF authors. First and foremost among them is that you can compile
your game in Imaginate; the Output pane gives you the result of each
compile attempt. You can’t play the game in Imaginate, but at least you
can see if your game compiles. If it fails to compile and returns
errors, you can double-click in the Output window and the line of code
where the error was found will display in the code window.

In TADS 2 mode (the mode used in this evaluation), you open your .tdc
file in Imaginate and the property explorer lists all the included
files. You can then double-click on a file name in that window to open
the file in the code window. If you even single-click a file in the
Project Window, all the objects, functions and classes in that file will
be shown in the Property Explorer. You can then double-click an object
in the Property Explorer and that file will open and the object will
appear in the code window. Another useful navigation feature, you can
place the curser on an object definition (a class name, say), click
search ? Goto Definition (or hit F6 key) and be taken to the object in
which the definition originates (but not to its most recent
modification, which can be problematic).

The Project Explorer is very powerful. The Class View tab gives you an
alphabetical list of every function, class and object in your entire
project (including those in adv.t), and lets you jump directly to that
object by a simple double-click. It also lists objects in relation to
their parent classes and it lists classes in relation to all the objects
(and classes) that inherit from them. Better still, when you click an
object in the Project Explorer, it opens up in the Property Explorer,
which then lists all the properties and methods within that object. If
you double-click the property or method in the Property Explorer,
Imaginate will, again, take you to the line of code that contains that
property or method.

Imaginate help files include the TADS 2 Manual, and it also provides
context-sensitive keyword help, in which you can place your cursor in
the TADS code and press F1. If an article corresponding to the text
under the cursor exists (i.e. the built-in function ‘rand()’ or ‘switch’
statement), it will open the appropriate article in the Help window.
Very cool.

All in all, Imaginate is extremely powerful when it comes to navigating
IF projects, but there are some serious drawbacks:

Cons:
The main problem with Imaginate, and one that I cannot fathom the author
omitting, is that it lacks spell checking. IF uses so much real
language that to not include a spell checker simply makes no sense.
This alone, in my opinion, makes it almost not worth all the fabulous
navigation, help and file compilation tools. Another negative is the
lack of a feature to search multiple files for text. It can search one
file for text and bookmark all the lines containing that text, but
unlike CE, it still can only search one file at a time. Imaginate can
also only open files that are included in the active project. While
this may not seem like too big a problem, there are occasions where you
want to borrow or refer to a bit of code from another game and you’ll
have no choice but to open that code in another application. Imaginate
also has a brace and parenthesis matching feature, but you’re required
to click an icon to use it, and you cannot select all the code contained
between two braces automatically. Another feature I find it odd to not
be included is that class names are not, by default, syntax highlighted
in the code window. Considering that Imaginate knows all the classes in
the project (including custom classes), for it to not highlight them is
a serious omission. Of course, CE only highlights built-in classes and
only because I thought it was a good idea for it to do so--class
highlighting is useful simply because when the class highlights you know
you spelled and it properly and used proper letter casing.

Incidentally, Imaginate also lacks in-string method evaluation (refer to
my discussion about this in my Crimson Editor review).

I heartily recommend CE to anyone who programs any file type including
and beyond IF languages. Its multitudinous syntax files cover the gamut
of different programming languages, and its users are active in adding
more. It is extremely fast and easy to install and use and makes
programming a breeze. Imaginate, on the other hand, once you
overlook its lack of a spell check feature, is amazingly powerful for IF
authoring.

Crimson Editor: http://www.crimsoneditor.com
Imaginate: http://www.imaginate.free-online.co.uk/

[Edo]

On 9 Aug 2005 06:20:50 -0700, drus...@wotmania.com wrote:

> Zach Flynn wrote:
> > So, just out of complete curiousity. What text editor do all of you use
> > to write your games?

I am just learning Inform and find Crimson Editor's support for syntax
highlighting a godsend. It's not an editing powerhouse like vi, but
it's powerful enough for a beginner like me. I doubt I'll ever use all
of its functions.

It's not open-source software, but it's free as in beer (donations are
optional) and can be downloaded here:

http://www.crimsoneditor.com

On my system, I have added two 'tools' (basically menu options you can
use to call external programs with a wide array of variables like file
names, or -- very useful when compiling -- file titles) to make
compiling a matter of simply pressing CRTL + 1. For playtesting, just
press CTRL + 2. Now if an idiot like me can set up a program to do
that for him, it *must* be intuitive to use -- and it is. Give it a
whirl.

Edo

[stu]

i use jEdit, it has full syntax highlighting support for inform. its a
full on programmers editor. it puts every other editor I have ever used
to shame. mac, windows, unix, etc. all platforms.

www.jedit.org

[Damian Dollahite]

I have tried probably every freeware and shareware syntax-highlighting
text editor on the internet, including every single one that's been
mentioned in this thread (except for the Linux-only ones) and about a
dozen that haven't been, and found all of them lacking.

I don't recall specifically what I found wrong with any particular one,
but the typical show-stoppers were:

- No support for multi-line strings
- The syntax-highlighting wasn't customizable enough to cope with TADS3
- Intolerably buggy

The only editor I've found that has met my expectations is ConTEXT. It's
got some glitches with block highlights spilling out of their blocks,
but other than that it's great. It has a handy "tabs to spaces" feature
where it inserts spaces instead of tabs when you press the tab key, plus
it will delete a tab's worth of spaces when you press backspace at a tab
stop. Lots of editors have the former, few have the latter.

I'm also currently trying out a program called RJEdit. It's got the best
syntax-highlighting customization system I've ever seen, but lacks the
"confine cursor to text" and "smart home key" functions I'm accustomed to.

--
Ryukage

[Nikos Chantziaras]

Damian Dollahite wrote:
>
> I have tried probably every freeware and shareware syntax-highlighting
> text editor on the internet, including every single one that's been
> mentioned in this thread (except for the Linux-only ones) and about a
> dozen that haven't been, and found all of them lacking.

> [...]

> The only editor I've found that has met my expectations is ConTEXT.

You could also go overboard and try Eclipse. I'm not sure if it's easy
to customize for TADS; it's for Java, and also has a C++ plugin. In any
event, it's "industrial strength" and might be total overkill (has
things like code-completion in it). It's something like Open Source, I
think. Not GPL though.

[Jon Ripley]

Damian Dollahite wrote:
> I have tried probably every freeware and shareware syntax-highlighting
> text editor on the internet, including every single one that's been
> mentioned in this thread (except for the Linux-only ones) and about a
> dozen that haven't been, and found all of them lacking.
>
> I don't recall specifically what I found wrong with any particular one,
> but the typical show-stoppers were:
>
> - No support for multi-line strings
> - The syntax-highlighting wasn't customizable enough to cope with TADS3
> - Intolerably buggy

Add to that list:
- No block editing feature (multiline synchronous editing)

The only editor that has this feature I have found is StrongEd by
Guttorm Vik. http://www.stronged.iconbar.com/

This is my editor of choice when I need to do some real work.

Anyone know of another editor with multiline synchronous editing?

Have fun,
Jon Ripley
--
http://jonripley.com/

[Chris Pickett]

Jon Ripley wrote:
> Damian Dollahite wrote:
>
>> I have tried probably every freeware and shareware syntax-highlighting
>> text editor on the internet, including every single one that's been
>> mentioned in this thread (except for the Linux-only ones) and about a
>> dozen that haven't been, and found all of them lacking.
>>
>> I don't recall specifically what I found wrong with any particular
>> one, but the typical show-stoppers were:
>>
>> - No support for multi-line strings
>> - The syntax-highlighting wasn't customizable enough to cope with TADS3
>> - Intolerably buggy
>
>
> Add to that list:
> - No block editing feature (multiline synchronous editing)

Hmmm... I'm pretty sure emacs and xemacs meet those anti-criteria, and
can handle pretty much anything you throw at them. I'd guess that the
same applies to vi and vim as well, it's just that I never use them.

If you need help getting emacs to work, #emacs on irc.freenode.net is a
good place to ask. Again, I'd imagine the same applies to #vi.

Chris

[A Ninny]

Damian Dollahite wrote:

> I'm also currently trying out a program called RJEdit. It's got the best
> syntax-highlighting customization system I've ever seen, but lacks the
> "confine cursor to text" and "smart home key" functions I'm accustomed to.

Excuse my ignorance. Can you please describe what those two features do?

[James Cunningham]

On Mon, 15 Aug 2005 07:16:59 -0400, Nikos Chantziaras <rea...@hotmail.com>
wrote:

Eclipse is certainly overkill for this sort of thing, until such a time as
there's some IDE plugin for tads or inform. Maybe someday! It would make
me one happy dude. I have a fondness in my heart for Eclipse, even if I
don't use it very much.

For now, though ... I don't even think you could get syntax highlighting to
work without some effort. I have a syntax coloring plugin installed -
http://gstaff.org/colorEditor/ - but it doesn't do anything with .inf
files,
even though it supposedly uses jEdit's syntax highlighting modes and jEdit
likes 'em fine.

For the record: the only editor I've found that does absolutely everything
that I want, and does it spectacularly well, is SlickEdit. It is also
$280 for a single user license. Unless you have access to a work copy,
and -

Er.

I've said too much.

[Damian Dollahite]

"confine cursor to text" means the cursor won't go past the end of a
line; without it the cursor goes exactly where you click even if there's
no text there.

"smart home key" means that when you press the "home" key, the cursor
goes to the first non-whitespace position on the line; if it's already
there it goes to column 0 instead. This is very useful behaviour when
working with files that use a lot of indention, like source code.

Both of these features are pretty standard in text editors these days;
it's the mark of an amateur to forget to them in.

--
Ryukage

[Damian Dollahite]

Chris Pickett wrote:
> Hmmm... I'm pretty sure emacs and xemacs meet those anti-criteria, and
> can handle pretty much anything you throw at them. I'd guess that the
> same applies to vi and vim as well, it's just that I never use them.
>
> If you need help getting emacs to work, #emacs on irc.freenode.net is a
> good place to ask. Again, I'd imagine the same applies to #vi.
>

Do emacs and vi come in Win32 GUI versions now? When I was taking
programming classes they wanted me to use vi through telnet on the
school's UNIX server. One look at the arm-length list of complicated
sequences of utterly non-mnemonic ctrl-key commands just to do simple
things like moving the cursor around and I decided to write my code at
home in Visual Studio and upload it to the server instead.

--
Ryukage

[Chris Pickett]

Damian Dollahite wrote:

> Do emacs and vi come in Win32 GUI versions now? When I was taking
> programming classes they wanted me to use vi through telnet on the
> school's UNIX server. One look at the arm-length list of complicated
> sequences of utterly non-mnemonic ctrl-key commands just to do simple
> things like moving the cursor around and I decided to write my code at
> home in Visual Studio and upload it to the server instead.

I don't know about vi, but I was happily using a Win32 GUI version of
emacs (or was it xemacs -- I forget) in 2000. I haven't tried
recently, but I'm sure it's still quite possible. There's even an
emacs syntax highlighting mode that ships with Inform. Moving the
cursor in emacs is pretty easy, since you can use pgdn, pgup, and the
arrow keys like you'd expect to, as well as equivalent ctrl-key
combinations (which I rarely use). The GUI version has buttons as well
as pull-down menu commands for the most important things if you forget
shortcuts or just want to click. Once you get used to it (yes, there
is a learning curve, such that most people will never use emacs to its
full potential, including myself), it's really quite good... I'll never
need another editor.

Feeling spammed yet? :)

Chris

[Chris Pickett]

Chris Pickett wrote:
> I don't know about vi, but I was happily using a Win32 GUI version of
> emacs (or was it xemacs -- I forget) in 2000. I haven't tried
> recently, but I'm sure it's still quite possible.

To clarify, xemacs is a fork of emacs that tends to be more visually
appealing, but is otherwise the same thing, apart from political and
distribution differences (as far as I understand it). I just use
terminal versions though so that I get the same interface everywhere I
go.

Cheers,
Chris

[Timofei Shatrov]

On 17 Aug 2005 10:28:41 -0700, "Chris Pickett" <cpi...@gmail.com> tried
to confuse everyone with this message:

>Damian Dollahite wrote:
>
>> Do emacs and vi come in Win32 GUI versions now? When I was taking
>> programming classes they wanted me to use vi through telnet on the
>> school's UNIX server. One look at the arm-length list of complicated
>> sequences of utterly non-mnemonic ctrl-key commands just to do simple
>> things like moving the cursor around and I decided to write my code at
>> home in Visual Studio and upload it to the server instead.
>
>I don't know about vi, but I was happily using a Win32 GUI version of
>emacs (or was it xemacs -- I forget) in 2000.

I want to announce that I'm making a Lisp library for developing IF.
Once it will be out there would be no other choice. You all would be
using Emacs to match the countless parentheses. Mwa ha ha!

A little snippet to get you going... Defining a class and some objects.

(ifclass room () (description string)
(n object) (ne object) (e object) (se object)
(s object) (sw object) (w object) (nw object)
(u object) (d object) (inside object) (out object)
(has :light :enterable))

(object darkness (room)
(description "It's pitch black. You can't see a thing")
(has :~light))

;;Compass directions
(object compass ())
(object dir-n () "north" compass (property 'n))
(object dir-ne () "northeast" compass (property 'ne))
(object dir-e () "east" compass (property 'e))

...and so on
--
|a\o/r|,-------------.,---------- Timofei Shatrov aka Grue ------------.
| m"a ||FC AMKAR PERM|| mail: grue at mail.ru http://grue3.tripod.com |
| k || PWNZ J00 || Kingdom of Loathing: Grue3 lvl 18 Seal Clubber |
`-----'`-------------'`-------------------------------------------[4*72]

[Richard Bos]

Damian Dollahite <ryu...@aol.com> wrote:

> Do emacs and vi come in Win32 GUI versions now?

Apparently. Must've taken someone perverted in two separate ways to hack
that up.

> When I was taking
> programming classes they wanted me to use vi through telnet on the
> school's UNIX server. One look at the arm-length list of complicated
> sequences of utterly non-mnemonic ctrl-key commands just to do simple
> things like moving the cursor around and I decided to write my code at
> home in Visual Studio and upload it to the server instead.

That's what I'd call out of the frying pan, into the fire. There _are_
real editors for MS Windows, you know.

Richard

[Zach Flynn]

hehe sounds fun. Although I still think the best would be a Development
Enviroment in BrainF*ck or Whitespace. Actually, come to think of it,
I'm going to right a game for Whitespace. Hehe I enjoy it. But first
I'll finish my current game for IFComp05. Don't worry it's Inform, not
Whitespace lol.

-Zach

[Raymond Martineau]

On Wed, 17 Aug 2005 08:44:20 -0500, Damian Dollahite <ryu...@aol.com>
wrote:

>Chris Pickett wrote:
>> Hmmm... I'm pretty sure emacs and xemacs meet those anti-criteria, and
>> can handle pretty much anything you throw at them. I'd guess that the
>> same applies to vi and vim as well, it's just that I never use them.
>>
>> If you need help getting emacs to work, #emacs on irc.freenode.net is a
>> good place to ask. Again, I'd imagine the same applies to #vi.
>>
>
>Do emacs and vi come in Win32 GUI versions now?

Emacs doesn't have a Win32 port - the developers consider a "win" to bo a
hacker's accomplishment. Thus, you have a W32 port instead.

Pedantics aside, Emacs has had a GUI for all major platforms quite some
time. The only problem with W32 is that it opens a console window, but is
otherwuse fully functional.

>When I was taking
>programming classes they wanted me to use vi through telnet on the
>school's UNIX server. One look at the arm-length list of complicated
>sequences of utterly non-mnemonic ctrl-key commands just to do simple
>things like moving the cursor around

The basic keys aren't mnemonic, but function by memorizing or visualizing
hew cursor movement works. Try VI on a Dvorak keyboard. :p

After that, you have too take a quick tutorial(s) to get tho basics down
pact.

Of course, VI just plain sucks. A much better replacements us VIM, with
enhanced mode (as it doesn't inconsistantly kick you out of onsert mode
when using the cersor keys.) It still suffers from being bound to QWERTY,
but it gives much better feedback.

[Damian Dollahite]

Timofei Shatrov wrote:
> I want to announce that I'm making a Lisp library for developing IF.
> Once it will be out there would be no other choice. You all would be
> using Emacs to match the countless parentheses. Mwa ha ha!

Lack of parentheses/brace matching would have been on my list of
show-stoppers if I had encountered any editors that didn't have it and
weren't already rejected based on one of my other criteria. Most editors
at least highlight the matching brace when the cursor is placed on the
other, and several also have jump-to-match and autocomplete functons. A
few even have block-collapse.

--
Ryukage