As a recent discoverer of Inform, I have found that I am enjoying
learning to use the language in small snatches of spare time in between
my normal day-to-day activities using my Pocket PC.

I have had Ian Keen's Pocket Frotz, installed on my Pocket PC for a
while now, along with Symbolic Tools' Pocket Console, Microsoft's
CMD and an ARM version of Inform.

I have been using Pocket Word for editing my source files and flipping
back and forth between that and the command prompt, where I have a few
batch files to compile things and generally manage things for me.

Anyways...The main reason that I am writing is that, to try and make my
life a little easier, I have began developing a Pocket PC based IDE for
Inform. At the moment it is still very basic, but I thought perhaps
other Pocket PC'ers/Informers may be interested.

As it stands, it requires Pocket Frotz, to test/play your creations and
Pocket Console, CMD and Inform for compilation. It also calls the HTML
version of DM4 from the Inform Language Help.

The features are as follows.

Source code editor with the following features:
Undo, Cut, Copy, Paste Find, Find Next, Find Line

Compiler/Editor Integration.
Skips through the source code and highlights each line with an error,
displaying a description of it in a separate error window beneath the
source code, using First Error & Next Error menu commands.

Integration of the Inform Compiler and Pocket Frotz with the Editor.
Once compiled, if you have no errors, you can jump straight into
testing/playing the compilation.

New Project Wizard: Uses a fill-in form to generate a compilable
template from which to create your new work.

The Point and click menu driven interface can be used to open your
source, compile and play (using the above required components) in a few
mouse clicks and helps you be more productive.

I plan to continue developing this for my own use, and include some of
the following features...

Object Wizard

Will employ a GUI to allow the source for an object to be built from
the ground up, or derived from a base class. Class definitions and
object definitions will be stored as reusable components in a
repository and could be used across projects.

As I said, it is in its early stages at the moment, but I would just
like to get a feel for any interest there may be for this tool. It will
be made freely available to anyone who wants it, and I will try to take
on board any ideas.

If anyone is interested in this project, as a co-developer or a user,
they may contact me at AlnRo...@hotmail.com. Just put InformEd in the
subject of the email. Just bear in mind it's still in its infancy and
far from "Visual Studio", but as it stands does speed things up a
bit!

Thanks for your time.

Alan Bell