Inform

An interactive fiction programming language, created by Graham Nelson in 1993 and now one of the most popular populars (along with TADS and Hugo). Inform is particularly notable in that it compiles to code for the Z-machine, the same virtual machine used by Infocom. More recent versions of the Inform compiler optionally produce code for the more powerful and flexible virtual machine Glulx.

Inform is portable across many hardware platforms. Interpreters for z-code exist for nearly every computer system ever designed and Glulx interpreters exist for most major operating systems currently in use.

Although Inform is not an easy language to learn, its binaries are widely supported, and many code libraries are freely available on the Internet. Inform is well served by two valuable manuals, the Inform Designer's Manual (often called "the DM4") and the Inform Beginner's Guide. (See: http://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/index.html)

-- MGH - 21 Nov 2002

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Technical Articles

1. How to create clever doors in Inform
2. How to use statues in puzzles in Inform

Discussion

Changed "...widely supported: intrepreters..." to the current form with a period. ErichFrank

VivDunstan - 22 Nov 2002 Minor change, capitalised one of Z-machine refs for consistency

More minor tweaking, added another reason for Inform's popularity. -- DGJ - 23 Nov 2002

VivDunstan - 08 Dec 2002 Added links to programming language definition