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Project ISML

I've started a new project that I'm quite excited about.  I don't have much to show right now, but I hope to have something interesting in about six months.  In the meantime, here's the vision statement for the project:

ISML stands for Interactive Story Modeling Language, but you can call it "Ishmael." It is an authoring system for creating interactive web content including Interactive Fiction (IF) aka text adventure games, Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) style hypertext stories, quizzes, chat-bots, hidden object games, spelling bees, tile games, or any other multi-media interactive experience you can imagine.

The ISML modeling language makes intuitive sense to authors. You can be successful with ISML even if you have no programming skills. Stumbling blocks such as nested logic, loops, recursion, case-sensitivity, pointers, and variable scope are de-emphasized or non-existent. Where these concepts do exist, the language presents them in a way that is natural and accessible to the author and seamlessly integrated into the story being told. Some previous exposure to HTML and CSS is helpful, but the emphasize is on writing the story, not coding the program.

ISML stories run in your web browser and can include multi-media components.

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Don't Call Me ISML

Well, it appears that the ISML acronym is already a bit overloaded:  https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/ISML .  That's OK. I'll just change it to ISHML, which stands for Interactive Story Hypertext Modeling Language.  You can still call it "Ishmael," though. This is actually more descriptive of what this language is turning out to be: some custom HTML elements that when combined with the ISHML story engine creates an Interactive Fiction experience in you web browser.