Inductively generated formal topologies

Formal topology is today an established topic in the development of constructive, that is intuitionistic and predicative, mathematics. Many classical results of general topology have been already brought into the realm of constructive mathematics by using formal topology and also new light on basic topological notions was gained with this approach which allows distinction which are not sensible in classical topology. Here we give a systematic exposition of one of the main tools in formal topology: inductive generation. In fact, many formal topologies can be presented in a predicative way by an inductive generation and thus their properties can be proved inductively.