Download and install the Inform application
 
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Inform is free and runs on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and Solaris. The OS X and Windows applications, by Andrew Hunter and David Kinder, are well established and essentially complete. Most Linux distros should be able to run the Gnome user interface by P. F. Chimento, which is offered in convenient package form for Fedora and Ubuntu; the command-line tools underlying this are ported to Linux by Adam Thornton, who also provides a basic command-line interface for use on Unix platforms without Gnome.
Versions of Inform are identified by the build number, a digit-letter-digit-digit combination. The Change Log records all changes back to build 3K27. The Release Notes note only what’s new in build 5T18.
Application Documents Extensions
Inform build 5T18 for Mac OS X
Apple Macintosh computer running Mac OS X.
Universal Binary for Macs running Tiger 10.4.3 or later, including 10.5 Leopard. (Panther 10.3.9 is unsupported but may work.) Click the logo to download I7_5T18_OSX.dmg (about 11 MB). Your browser may automatically mount the image: if not, double-click the .img file by hand. Either way, you should see a Finder window open showing a virtual disk. This contains the both the change log, for convenience, and the Inform application Inform.app. Simply drag this to the computer’s Applications folder, or wherever else you like.
To uninstall: Simply drag the Inform.app to the trash.
Source code: Inform 7 is an assembly of a user interface application (including text editing and game interpretation) with independent command-line tools. The Inform application for Mac OS X is released under the General Public License, and accordingly its source code can be downloaded as a zip archive by clicking on the icon. (The underlying command-line tools share the traditional Inform license: they are free, and impose no significant restrictions on even commercial use, but are not yet open source in the sense of the GPL (even though source code is likely to be published in due course): in particular, those wishing to develop variant forms must apply for copyright permission.)
 
Inform build 5T18 for Windows
PC running Windows 95 or later. (For Windows 95 and 98, Internet Explorer 5.0 or later must also be installed.) Click the logo to download I7_5T18_Windows.exe (about 3.5 MB), and save it to your hard drive. Double click on the downloaded file to start installation. For most users the default install parameters are what is required, so just keep clicking "Next" until the install has completed. An entry for "Inform 7" will appear in the Start Menu, from which Inform can be run. *** Note ***: If you already have a build of Inform for Windows installed which is earlier than 3P53, it must be uninstalled (see below) before the current build is installed.
To uninstall: Go to "Add or Remove Programs" in the Control Panel, select "Inform 7" and click on "Remove".
Source code: The Inform application for Windows is released under the General Public License, and accordingly its source code can be downloaded as a zip archive by clicking on the icon.
 
Inform build 5T18 for Linux (with GNOME user interface)
The packages downloadable here are built from the gnome-inform7 project at Sourceforge: it should be possible to download and build the application on most other Linux distributions, too.
 
GNOME Linux packaged for use with Fedora 8. (This is a .rpm archive.) Double-click on the downloaded file and enter your administrator password to start installation. Click "Apply" and click "Install anyway" if you get a message that the package is not signed. An entry for "GNOME Inform 7" will appear under "Programming" in the "Applications" menu.
To uninstall: Go to "Add/Remove Software" in the "Applications" menu and find "gnome-inform7" in the list. Uncheck the check box in front of it and click "Apply", and then "Continue".
Source code: The source code for the Inform for GNOME Linux application, which is released under the General Public License, can be found at the Sourceforge page (see link above).
 
GNOME Linux packaged for use with Ubuntu 8.04. (This is a .deb archive.) Double-click on the downloaded file to start installation. Click "Install Package" and enter your password. An entry for "GNOME Inform 7" will appear under "Programming" in the "Applications" menu after you have restarted your computer.
To uninstall: Go to "Synaptic Package Manager" under "Administration" in the "System" menu, find "gnome-inform7" in the list, right-click on it, and select "Mark for complete removal". Then click "Apply".
Source code: The source code for the Inform for GNOME Linux application, which is released under the General Public License, can be found at the Sourceforge page (see link above).
 
 
Inform build 5T18 for Linux (command line only)
 
CLI Linux is available for i386 architectures or (as a larger download) for any of i386, x86_64, armv5tel, ppc, s390, or s390x.  There is also a Solaris version for Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris on both x86 and sparc, as well as NexentaOS.
CLI Inform for Linux is supplied as a gzipped tar. Once this is opened, installation instructions can be found in the file INSTALL, and operational instructions in README or the manual page installed by the Inform installer. This is an assembly of a command-line interface written in Perl which is released under the General Public License, and whose source code is included with the above downloads, together with independent command-line tools.
 
      
CLI Linux built for i386 Linux architectures.
 
 
 
      
CLI Linux built for general Linux architectures. (For the following six architectures: i386, x86_64, armv5tel, ppc, s390, s390x.)
 
 
      
CLI Unix built for Solaris 10/OpenSolaris. (Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris for x86 and sparc, as well as NexentaOS.)
 
 
 
Inform 6.31 N
Inform 6 is outwardly very different from Inform 7, and has its own website. It is not so much an earlier version of the software as an inner one: I7 uses I6 as a component, so all of the above distributions contain their own embedded copies of I6 (and there is no need to download anything further). People do continue to use it as an alternative to I7, and there are no plans to withdraw it as an independent system.
Development of I6 is at present in between versions 6.31 and 6.32. While 6.31 is the current public build, and 6.32 is not yet officially available, I7 needs some of the proposed 6.32 patches to fix bugs and keep up with developments in the Glulx virtual machine design. The I7 team therefore uses a form of I6 consisting of 6.31 plus a minimal set of patches known not to cause problems: this version is called 6.31 N, and David Kinder is its curator.
For the convenience of people developing I6 (and I7), the zipped C source code for Inform 6.31 N can be downloaded using this link.