a good programming text editor (not IDE)

[Dave Cook]

Very small, very fast, very powerful, and very portable (though I'm
not sure about Mac...): Take a look at Jed from www.jedsoft.org.

You might not find it pretty, however...

But if your distro includes xjed (ubuntu/debian, but not newer fedoras) try

xjed -fn mono -fs 16

Dave Cook

 

[BartlebyScrivener]

re soft word wrap

I have advocated seeing lines (with a CR and/or LF) as paragraphs, and
making the display of lines a matter of the particular display, not the
original data. That is much more natural for wrapped text, i.e. real
text rather than computer-parseable files.

I agree.

Meanwhile I wrote a friend who is a vim aficionado, and he advises it
IS possible to achieve soft word wrap in vim.

When editing a text file, if you want word wrapping, but ONLY want line
breaks inserted when you explicitly press the enter key:

:set formatoptions=1
:set lbr

lbr tells vim to word wrap visually, but formatoptions=1 tells vim to
not insert hard newlines when you edit the middle of a 'paragraph.'

rd

 

[josiah.carlson]

I know there's a request for a good IDE at least once a week on the ng,
but hopefully this question is a little different. I'm looking for
suggestions for a good cross-platform text editor (which the features
for coding, such as syntax highlighting, etc.) but not a full IDE with
all the fancy jazz (GUI developer, UML diagrams, etc.).

Ideally, it would be something I could even put on a flash drive and
move from computer to computer, but this isn't necessary. Just something
I can immediately use in either Windows or Linux (or Mac, if necessary). [snip]
Thanks for any suggestions, and again I'm sorry if this feels like the
same question as usual (it's just that in my case, I'm not looking for
something like SPE, Komodo, Eric3, etc. right now).

I was taking a peek at c.l.py to check for replies in another thread
and couldn't help notice your asking about editors. Please pardon the
personal pimping, but have you looked at PyPE (pype.sf.net)? It
doesn't do everything, isn't geared towards every language, but as far
as I know, it is fairly cross-platform (there seems to be an
outstanding bug on ubuntu 6.06, but I need to get an installation to
check it out), and can offer a fairly no-frills interface for writing
software. The next release will include support for working from a
removable device (I plan on releasing before the end of the month), but
may not have an ubuntu fix (I may not have time to get one running).

- Josiah

 

[Grant Edwards]

You died in last century with your editor, we have tabs.

My condolences. I hear there's a cure for that, though.

 

[Grant Edwards]

Very small, very fast, very powerful, and very portable (though I'm
not sure about Mac...): Take a look at Jed from www.jedsoft.org.

It's been my editor of choice for many years. Running Emacs on
a machine with 8MB of RAM and 80MB of disk got a bit old.

 

[Michele Simionato]

hints: 1) editor wars are so last century. 2) emacs has already won.

</F>

Yep, there is no much point about arguing for Emacs since everything is
already
explained here: http://www.dina.kvl.dk/~abraham/religion


Michele Simionato

 

[Ant]

Well that's good to know. I guess there's not much of a point in writing
pure Python code with Jython, but at least now I know it works that way!

That's right - but it's very useful for scripting Java (for example in
jEdit) as you have access not only to the Python library, but to the
Java API (which you just use as if they were Python modules).

 

[Ant]

Mental memory (the painful kind of memory) rapidly turns into muscle
memory (the fun kind of memory) and all of those mind boggling
keystrokes begin to feel like an artistic expression reminiscent of
playing the piano.

That's probably true. I still have a long way to go to get the most out
of vim though, because it takes a certain amount of mental memory to be
able to use the keystrokes often enough to turn them into muscle
memory...

I tend to use gvim on my PC if I'm also working on my server via ssh -
that way it doesn't matter if I type a few ESC :w's or :dd's. Otherwise
I tend to use jEdit.

 

[Sergei Organov]

I know there's a request for a good IDE at least once a week on the ng,
but hopefully this question is a little different. I'm looking for
suggestions for a good cross-platform text editor (which the features
for coding, such as syntax highlighting, etc.) but not a full IDE with
all the fancy jazz (GUI developer, UML diagrams, etc.).

Ideally, it would be something I could even put on a flash drive and
move from computer to computer, but this isn't necessary. Just something
I can immediately use in either Windows or Linux (or Mac, if
necessary).

These days one can put entire OS to a flash drive, not only an editor.

[...]

And naturally there are Emacs and Vim, but I just don't know if I need
to invest *that* much time into learning one of them (probably Vim,
since I hear it's lighter and faster).

From this thread you can easily see that people that never look for

another editor are either Emacs or Vim users. I think you have two
options here: either spend some time to master one of them, or spend the
rest of your life looking for a good editor

[I compose this reply in XEmacs, yes]

 

[mystilleef]

On linux, I recommend Scribes. It's simple, slim and sleek, yet
powerful.

Features:

Automatic completion
Automatic bracket completion and smart insertion
Snippets (ala TextMate)
Bookmarks
Syntax highlight for more than 30 languages
Launches faster than any IDE out their
Has no learning curve.
Features your typical text processing operations you'll find in
VIM/Emacs.
Remembers window position and size.
Sexy interface that actually adheres to human interface guidlines
And many more...

The next version will even feature remote editing.

website: ( http://scribes.sourceforge.net/ )
Flash Demo: ( http://scribes.sourceforge.net/snippets.htm )
GIF Demo: ( http://www.minds.may.ie/~dez/images/blog/scribes.html )

 

[bruno at modulix]

John Salerno wrote:
(snip)

Based on another thread, I tried out Scite, but no matter what I do it
doesn't seem to remember the window size and position, or any options I
choose (like showing line numbers).

This is in the configuration files. Don't remember which and where, but
I clearly remember having done this.

And naturally there are Emacs and Vim, but I just don't know if I need
to invest *that* much time into learning one of them

If you have a lot of file editing to do in a lot of various formats,
then investing time on learning how to effectively use a powerful and
extensible test editor is the WiseThingTodo(tm).

(probably Vim,
since I hear it's lighter and faster).

It's a bit faster at startup, yes. Else, I'm not sure it makes a real
difference wrt/ performances and power. It's more a matter of personal
preference than anything else IMHO.

 

[bruno at modulix]

I see Eclipse mentioned here a lot.

If you go for a Mammoth-weight GUI-only Java IDE and have a really
powerful computer, why not ?

 

[bruno at modulix]

I like the idea of being extensible, but of course I can only write in
Python.

Jython is Python on Java.

Are there any editors that support that?

Emacs.

<plug>
Which BTW is just great for python programming - not only do you have
an embedded interactive python shell - the default one or IPython - but
much more, you can with a simple keystroke eval either the whole buffer
or a selected block in this embedded shell. Could'nt live without it no
more !-)

(and you have ecb if you want a file/class browser)
</plug>

But learning other languages might be a good idea too (even if once
spoiled by Python, if can be quite frustrating).

 

[bruno at modulix]

Emacs must be dying if this thread could get all the way to 20 with
nobody arguing with the vi folks.

No need to argue. I started with vim, and finally switched to emacs less
than one year later.

 

[bruno at modulix]

That's true, but even emacs and xemacs don't offer simple automatic
word wrap (i.e. wrap a line without splitting words or putting an eol
or hard carriage return at the end of every line). I don't know if vim
allows this.

line-wrapping in an IDE ???

It's something writers just take for granted in non-Unix
text editors.

Ah, ok. It's about vim/emacs as a general text editor. Emacs provides
word-wrapping, but true, it split words. I maybe wrong, but I don't
think it would be that hard to make it more word-friendly.

Now I wonder: what the use for line-wrapping at first ? Both emacs and
vim are text *editors*, not text *formatters*. Might be a unix-vs-others
cultural difference, but the general use on unix is to use some markup
(tex/LaTex, html, ReST or any 'structured-text' variant etc) and the
appropriate formater/renderer for presentation stuff.

 

[Tim Chase]

No need to argue. I started with vim, and finally switched to

emacs less than one year later.

Both are very-much-so good editors. I made the opposite switch
from emacs to vim in less than a year. Both are good^Wgreat
editors, so one's decision to use one over the other is more a
matter of working style. I don't grok LISP, and just never felt
at home in emacs, despite all the power I could see that was
there. I grok vim (and its similar power/extensibility), so I
migrated to it. I have to laugh at the whole holy-war thing, as
it's somewhat like arguing about a favorite color. "But blue is
so better than green! The sky is blue!" "Nuh, uh! Green is far
better than blue! Grass is green!" (okay, here in Texas, that
doesn't always hold as true...maybe personality #2 should be
arguing for brown instead).

My best friend is an emacs user, and I'm a vimmer...it doesn't
come between us.

-tkc

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Walter_D=F6rwald?=]

John Salerno wrote:
[snip]

Thanks for any suggestions, and again I'm sorry if this feels like the
same question as usual (it's just that in my case, I'm not looking for
something like SPE, Komodo, Eric3, etc. right now).

I was taking a peek at c.l.py to check for replies in another thread
and couldn't help notice your asking about editors. Please pardon the
personal pimping, but have you looked at PyPE (pype.sf.net)?

I tried it out and the first problem I noticed is that on Windows
opening a file from a Samba drive doesn't seem to work, as PyPE converts
the filename to lowercase.

Servus,
Walter

 

[Istvan Albert]

Surprise, surprise. One hour is not two weeks.

pressing Ctrl-1 while editing the source will execute the python on the
current source *and* it displays the output in a lower pane as it runs
*and* it allows me to simultanously edit the file *while* the program
is running.

yet I'll bet that you could not make Vim do this above ...

 

[josiah.carlson]

I tried it out and the first problem I noticed is that on Windows
opening a file from a Samba drive doesn't seem to work, as PyPE converts
the filename to lowercase.

....Samba is tricky, and I hadn't thought of it before. Normal Windows
is case-insensitive but case-preserving, and PyPE uses Python's
os.path.normcase(os.path.normpath(os.path.realpath(...))) to do
path/file normalization mapping for open files (keeping the
non-case-normalized filename), so that you can't really make the
mistake of opening the same file twice. This normally works on
platforms with consistant case handling, but if you are using Samba
running on any non-OSX *nix (whose filename case handling is not like
other *nixes) from Windows, there gets to be a bit of a problem as your
*nix case handling is different from Windows.

I have an idea of what needs to be done, and the fix for it will be in
PyPE 2.4.1, which I plan on releasing by June 30th.

- Josiah

 

[James Stroud]

Both are very-much-so good editors. I made the opposite switch
from emacs to vim in less than a year. Both are good^Wgreat
editors, so one's decision to use one over the other is more a
matter of working style. I don't grok LISP, and just never felt
at home in emacs, despite all the power I could see that was
there. I grok vim (and its similar power/extensibility), so I
migrated to it. I have to laugh at the whole holy-war thing, as
it's somewhat like arguing about a favorite color. "But blue is
so better than green! The sky is blue!" "Nuh, uh! Green is far
better than blue! Grass is green!" (okay, here in Texas, that
doesn't always hold as true...maybe personality #2 should be
arguing for brown instead).

My best friend is an emacs user, and I'm a vimmer...it doesn't
come between us.

-tkc

Yes, heartwarming, but if you are thinking marriage...


--
James Stroud
UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics
Box 951570
Los Angeles, CA 90095

http://www.jamesstroud.com/