Just to add to the insanity…I recently took the plunge and started using vim as well (transitioning from SciTE). I still don’t have it working fully as well as SciTE, but what it does do is pretty good.
However for I7 I use the IDE too. It’s probably the only IDE I’ve ever enjoyed using.
No doubt. vi is the simplest, easier-going text editor ever once people get past their bias against its minimalist interface, modal behavior and very particular way of dealing with text editing. Vim is only a greatly enhanced vi.
Getting rid of bias is one thing. But liking or disliking its modal behaviour must surely be a personal preference.
I think it’s simply bias because I was once a heavy emacs user. Just got fed up of all the manual dexterity needed. Far less such clutter with vi, despite hitting ESC so much… it was not a matter of preference for me: just learning to use it and being more comfortable.
Other editors just offer menus instead, but power-users will generally bind most used commands to keycombos anyway, so turning it effectivelly into mini-emacs. 
My favorite text editor is ConTEXT (Windows), which is completely free. I even use it for writing text documents, sometimes. It has an Inform 6 syntax highlighter file that can be downloaded from its archive of syntax highlighters:
contexteditor.org/highlighters/
I’ve been working on making a Hugo syntax highlighter.
However, I also use Implementor, a somewhat outdated IF programming environment that supports TADS 2, Inform 6, Hugo, and ALAN 2. It can be configured to launch the compilers and interpreters. It also seems to feature a spelling checker, but I’ve never used the feature.
Implementor is available on the IF Archive:
ifarchive.org/if-archive/pro … p13Win.zip
What does Implementor do Bainespal?
When you unzip it, the archive is set up with directories where you can install put the executables for the compilers and interpreters and also the library files for the supported authoring systems. However, you can also edit the configuration file (there’s a different one for each IF system) to point it to the path on your hard drive where you have your compiler and interpreter, and you can set compiler switches in the configuration file to point to the IF system’s library location, so you don’t need to put everything in Implementor’s directiory. When you launch the compiler from Implementor, any error messages are saved and displayed in a pane below the source code. The commands to compile or run the compiled gamefile are found in the menu produced when right-clicking.
Implementor also comes with indexes that explain the keywords, commands, library routines, ect. in each of the systems. These are displayed when you press F1, or from the menu. However, this reference material is probably not up to date with the latest versions. It’s definitely not current with the latest release of Hugo, but it’s still helpful.
You can edit the configuration file for the system that you’re working with inside of Implementor without needing to restart it. There’s a Configure command on the menu, which opens the configuration file. You can make any changes necessary, and when you close it, Implementor displays “Configuration Updated”, apparently having re-loaded the saved file.
Implementor has other features, but many of them are probably standard to programming text editors (commenting/uncommenting source code and increasing/decreasing indent, for instance). It may have other features that I don’t know how to use, but it’s not really all that complicated. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be able to match braces.
Its interface is definitely retro; it looks like it could have been a GUI DOS program, or maybe Windows 3.1. However, it has all the functionality of more modern applications, including re-sizable panes.
It’s definitely a very capable piece of software, probably one of the best applications made specifically for creating IF. I alternated between using Implementor and ConTEXT for “Dreary Lands”, and I think for another Inform 6 project that I never finished. I’ve also been using it for Hugo, but I’ll probably switch to ConTEXT eventually, because I’m more comfortable with it in general.
Paying using of UltraEdit for over 10 years.
It has fantastic search/replace, handles huge files easily and fast, and has column mode, which is just freaky, but it’s great.
David C.
www.textfyre.com
I thought for a second that column mode meant you could auto-reformat your code into columns. That would be freaky.
I’ve been using JIF for Inform 6 development. It has syntax highlighting and it keeps track of all the functions, object declarations, etc. to make it easier to jump around. You can also launch the compiler and interpreter from within the program. So, more or less a full-featured IDE.
http://www.slade.altervista.org/
JIF has its quirks but most of the time they don’t get in the way. I’m going to give the above-mentioned Implementor a shot for the sake of comparison.
I’m also curious, does anyone have experience writing Eclipse plugins? I’m wondering what would be involved to set one up for I6 with syntax highlighting and compilation, and whether it would also be able to support object references, renaming/refactoring, etc.
vim > emacs 
I strongly recommend avoiding Emacs. It’s a ridiculous time sink and it creates problems at a much faster rate than it solves them. It’s too late for those of us who are already addicted to its features, but for everyone else: save yourself, I beg you!
Can we argue about something less inflammatory, like electoral politics?
@FriendOfFred vim -c ‘term emacs’ 
Lately I use vim more than emacs because I found the plugin architecture easier to develop for. Emacs is amazing as well!
I actually really like Atom. I’ve been using it for a year or so now. I really like its ease of customization.
However, lately I’ve been having two 3,000 line each files open inside it for most of my usage time and it’s been really dogging. I’ve been thinking of switching to VS Code just because of that, even though I didn’t like it as much as Atom when I used it.
Sublime Text isn’t too bad either, but a lot of the default settings are very “What were they thinking?” verging on unusable, even though you can fix most of them if you dig deep enough into the settings.
…necroposting a 10-year old thread with an editor war troll? Seems like something that a shifty low-down dirty no-good vim lover might do. 
TextMate actually has some nice IF editing support options. Syntax highlighting and feature bundles for Inform 6, TADS 3, and also Twine, ink, and others. Many of the bundles aren’t available through the installer, however – you have to look them up on e.g. github.
Next we’ll discuss tabs versus spaces. 
To be fair though (not that this was the necroposter’s intention :P), text editors have come a really long way in 10 years, so it’s probably not a horrible thing to update this thread with more modern options.
I’ve been enjoying WordWrangler on Mac because I have ONE THING I have to use it for. I have to open up a giant generated HTML that reads in with no line breaks, and change the browser title name.
I was using some default thing and doing it with an 8 second lag between keypresses. I opened it in WW one day by accident and went “oh, that doesn’t have to happen…”
Notepad++ is a favorite for planning, but I similarly find the Inform IDE editor and AXMAs text editor, both with inherent syntax highlighting, work just fine.
In the interests of completeness (although I stand by my warning above), I’ll drop this link to a nascent Inform 7 Emacs mode:
(I have no connection with the person who made this, despite their GitHub username.)
This basically just has syntax highlighting, no other features, and IMO even some of the syntax highlighting is misguided. Comments, strings, text substitutions, and headings are all the syntax highlighting we need for I7 - function keyword highlighting is more distracting than helpful. Still, it might be something to build on.
Hi Everyone, I pulled together an integrated Vim environment for Inform7 using the Vim plugin architecture. Full documentation, installer, etc. is linked below: