editor for newbie

[ccc]

I've just started to play with Ruby. I'm using Windows XP. What is the
best text editor/IDE to use?

I have good experience with vi, intermediate experience with emacs,
and have used a number of others such as TextPad, Eclipse, and (sorry)
Visual Studio.

Also and especially for vi and emacs, hints and suggestions about
configuring the editor for Ruby.

Thanks, CC.

 

[Zhi-Qiang Lei]

For editor, I prefer Vim.
For IDE, I prefer NetBeans.

Furthermore there is a vi plugin for NetBeans.

I've just started to play with Ruby. I'm using Windows XP. What is the
best text editor/IDE to use?

I have good experience with vi, intermediate experience with emacs,
and have used a number of others such as TextPad, Eclipse, and (sorry)
Visual Studio.

Also and especially for vi and emacs, hints and suggestions about
configuring the editor for Ruby.

Thanks, CC.

Best regards,
Zhi-Qiang Lei
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Phillip Gawlowski]

I've just started to play with Ruby. I'm using Windows XP. What is the
best text editor/IDE to use?

I have good experience with vi, intermediate experience with emacs,
and have used a number of others such as TextPad, Eclipse, and (sorry)
Visual Studio.

No need to be sorry about Visual Studio. Eclipse, OTOH...

Anyway: If you have experience with vi, vim is a good choice with
syntax highlighting for Ruby. However, the default build of vim is not
built against Ruby, so there is no means of running scripts with
editor commands. There exists a vim build that supports Ruby, but only
1.8.6.

Also and especially for vi and emacs, hints and suggestions about
configuring the editor for Ruby.

This is a good start: http://jamescrisp.org/2007/03/01/_vimrc-for-ruby/

--
Phillip Gawlowski

Though the folk I have met,
(Ah, how soon!) they forget
When I've moved on to some other place,
There may be one or two,
When I've played and passed through,
Who'll remember my song or my face.

 

[David Masover]

I've just started to play with Ruby. I'm using Windows XP. What is the
best text editor/IDE to use?

Try them.

I have good experience with vi, intermediate experience with emacs,
and have used a number of others such as TextPad, Eclipse, and (sorry)
Visual Studio.

Of those, vim and Eclipse are probably your best bet. I don't know anything
about TextPad, really.

The important thing is syntax highlighting. If you can get things like
debugger integration and other IDE-like features, great, but most Ruby stuff
is designed to be independent of any sort of IDE, so I'd even learn towards
something like vim -- you want to be familiar enough with the language and
whatever platform you're building on that you're not tied to any particular
editor.

Disclaimer: I use Kate on Kubuntu, and I'm thinking it's time for a change
myself.

Also and especially for vi and emacs, hints and suggestions about
configuring the editor for Ruby.

Well, vim comes with decent out-of-the-box support. Here's my .vimrc:

filetype plugin on
filetype indent on
syntax on
set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set lbr
autocmd FileType ruby set ai sw=2 sts=2 et

The crucial thing is for the ruby stuff to use two spaces to indent. That's a
pretty consistent convention in the Ruby world.

 

[ccc]

Well, vim comes with decent out-of-the-box support. Here's my .vimrc:

filetype plugin on
filetype indent on
syntax on
set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set lbr
autocmd FileType ruby set ai sw=2 sts=2 et

Thanks. I use Perl at work and have used vi (vim) for about ten years
now, so this suits me fine. I wasn't familiar with 'filetype' so I've
actually learned something.

CC.

 

[Walton Hoops]

I've just started to play with Ruby. I'm using Windows XP. What is the
best text editor/IDE to use?

I have good experience with vi, intermediate experience with emacs,
and have used a number of others such as TextPad, Eclipse, and (sorry)
Visual Studio.

Also and especially for vi and emacs, hints and suggestions about
configuring the editor for Ruby.

Thanks, CC.

Just to be the odd man out here, I'll advocate Emacs. Technomancy's
excellent Emacs Starter Kit is great for Ruby development. Among other
things, it comes with inf-ruby.el, which lets you send pieces of Ruby
code from your active buffer into an IRB session running in another
buffer. I also find flymake (also already set up in the starter kit)
handy, as adds actual syntax checking to Emacs' syntax highlighting.

If your going with Vim, I'd have a look at this video
(http://vimcasts.org/episodes/running-vim-within-irb/) for a handy way
of doing something similar with Vim and IRB.