text editors

[miriam_e]

What is your favorite? And why?

I do more text editing on my computers than anything else. Years ago I bought a copy of the most powerful and easy-to-use text editor I've ever found: TextPad, from textpad.com

Here are the main reasons I like TextPad:

• GUI-based
  
• uses regular expressions in its search and replace functions
  
• lets you create re-usable macros to automate sequences (they are not embedded in the document)
  
• has syntax highlighting for virtually every type of text file known
  
• you can easily create new syntax highlighting files, as they are just text
  
• and you can just as simply edit old ones to improve them
  
• it has "clip libraries" of commonly used items which can be inserted into the working text by simply double-clicking the item in the clip list (for instance I use it to insert pieces of POVRay code into a scene I'm writing, or html elements into a web page)
  
• you can easily create your own clip libraries, as they are simply text
  
• you can just as simply edit old clip libraries
  
• there is no limit to the size of a clip item, for instance one of my clip libraries contains all the VRML nodes and a lot of commonly used fragments, and one of the clip list items is an entire basic VRML scene, with some simple object nodes, lighting, sound nodes, fog, and so on... all in one of the clip items
  
• almost any aspect of TextPad's operation can be altered to suit

TextPad does have 2 major drawbacks though:

• The macro language is closed and binary only, compiled by the program itself as you do the actions. Much better would be a text-based programming language like python, that can be tweaked and altered easily
  
• TextPad is MSWindows only, and I have almost succeeded in moving entirely to Linux.
  

So, good people. What is your favorite text editor?

Comments

[annie-lyne.livejournal.com]

I use vi, eternal text editor of the ages. Not that junky vim, though, nvi is my variant of choice.

I'm not a huge fan of syntax highlighting though.

By the way, if you switch to Linux, you may be able to run TextPad in a compatibility framework like wine, but the drawback is Linux and friends end their newlines differently to Windows, so any files that you create in TextPad may look funny in other Linux applications.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I've been researching and have downloaded vi. I'll try it out later today. I haven't heard of nvi.

Syntax highlighting makes programming much quicker by using the eye's neat pattern recognition facilities to help spot things. I initially didn't see the sense of it, having spent much time on the Amiga, where few editors use syntax highlighting, but since using it in TextPad I'd hate to do without it. It speeds my work greatly.

I was thinking of using wine for TextPad and my favorite MSWindows image viewer, Irfanview. I've had no success getting it to work yet, and I'd really prefer to use a native editor, especially if it can use a standard programming language to extend it.

TextPad can save files with line endings for MSWindows (CR-LF), Unix/Amiga (LF), or Mac (CR).

Thanks for your suggestion. I really appreciate it.

[annie-lyne.livejournal.com]

vi usually refers these days to a number of editors that behave in a similar way. vim and nvi are variants, vim being more bloated and feature-laden than nvi. But they are compatible and both get the job done in pretty much the same way. There's usually a bit of a learning curve to vi since it behaves very differently to how you'd expect, but once you get used to it, it becomes very efficient.

You shouldn't need to download it for Linux, since it is a standard Unix program, but you will for Windows.

I find indenting and spacing things usually does the job for me when I program as opposed to syntax highlight.

I'm glad TextPad can use multiple line-endings; that nullifies the only problem I was thinking of!

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I'm happy to be able to say I've finally got Wine working on Puppy Linux -- it seems the installation was broken. Boy! The documentation for Wine is ass-around -- it takes 5 chapters of configuration and explanations before you get to how to run the damn thing. In the version I have there was no configuration file, and a lot of things seemed to be absent. After building a basic config file I have a feeling it would have worked fine without it. Oh well... it works now.

It is nice to have the wonderful capabilities of irfanview if I need them. Xnview does most things irfanview does, but there are a number of nice things I've grown used to having in irfanview.

TextPad finally works on Puppy now too (via Wine) but I still feel like I want a native editor. I looked more at Vi. It seems very much like an editor I used on the Amiga which I used constantly. I found an extensible editor for Linux called Cute, which uses python as its extension language. This appeals to me greatly as I think python is by far the most sane language developed (I've learned more than a dozen computer languages in the past). I'll try out Cute. One of the things it says in its sourceforge page is that it has vi-like commands. hmmm...

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

I also use vi. Used to use it under BSD and SysV Unix in the early 80's, then under DOS. I still use a DOS version of it under Windoze. As already noted, there are a number of vi variants under Linux, of which nvi is the neatest and closest to the real thing.

I like it because it's fast, extremely capable (regular expressions, macros, etc) with very few keystrokes, non-GUI, available for any system and has piles of useful options (auto-indent, text wrapping at arbitrary column width, etc). A really great one for programming is the ability to have tag files (which keep track of where every routine is in your programs) and automatically jump to editing the file containing that routine if you ask it to. (However, you have to run something to generate the tags file(s), such as ctags for c program files.)

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

This really is making me think vi is worth further exploration. One thing I miss greatly with TextPad is a ctags-like function on my favorite editor, dme, on the Amiga which let me look up a command from my program text. It was great! When I couldn't remember the options for some obscure command I simply highlighted it in the text and told it to do the look-up. After finding out what I wanted I'd close the reference and continue editing. Brilliant! If I can get Vi or some variant of it to do that then I'll be one happy possum!

Another nice thing dme had was the ability to make two different kinds of macros. One consisted of strings of internal dme key commands, which look similar in some ways to the Vi commands -- they can be entered directly in command mode or run from a separate file. The other kind of macro was using the Rexx language.

Almost all programs on the Amiga have Rexx access so you could easily string multiple smaller programs together to make far more capable ones (for instance I used to like running my text editor to control the paint program in order to make mathematical shapes, then output the result back to the text editor as VRML code -- all in realtime. You can't do anything like this on Windows, and I haven't yet seen a way to do it on Linux. (sigh)

Anothr vi user

[paddy3118.livejournal.com]

I did use the elvis vi clone but now use vi and also the vim clone.
For Python work i use the taglist.vim, python.vim and bicycle repair man vim plugins.
I like syntax highlighting and usually turn it on. When it works well then it helps catch typo's due to my laptop keyboard not being of best quality. the syntax highlighting can also be exported as HTML. I use past highlighted HTML on wiki's when pasting code examples.

- Paddy.

Re: Anothr vi user

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Wow! Another. This certainly seems to be overwhelming proof that I ought to put the time into learning it. I must admit there have been quite a few times when I've been working with others, that being able to export syntax-highlighted code would have been a blessing.

Thanks for the names of the python plugins, as I expect it is going to be my main language. It is such a lovely language.

I'm curious why the dislike for elvis. I downloaded it last night and was going to spend some time on it today, but if it has some overwhelming disadvantage then I might as well get straight into vim. About the only differences I can see are a GUI, and support for multiple files being held in the (tabbed) workspace.

Re: Anothr vi user

[belegdel.livejournal.com]

vi can be a beast of a thing to learn. Coming from pre-GUI days as it does, it's a different paradigm. In fact vi was an overlay for ed, a line editor that gives new meaning to the term "painful".
That beig said, once used to vi it is frightfully efficient and with experience once can make changes rapidly and without much thought. I find that invaluable when most of one's cncentration is focussed on solving programming/sysadmin problems. The last thing you want is to be distracted by your text editor.

I found, when learning vi, having a command reference handy is essential (though I recall the linux version having a built-in reference)?

You should probably know that there is one of those lame geek "holy wars" between vi and "emacs". I've never used emacs so I can't really comment further.

Re: Anothr vi user

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Yes. Vi does look like an odd critter, though it is similar to an old Amiga editor I've always loved, and oddly it is very much like an editor I wrote many many years ago. I don't think I'd have a lot of problems adapting to it. My main concern is that after spending the time it could come up lacking in some of the things I value. Reading thru the manuals (haven't finished them yet) I can't see any reference to anything like the clip libraries I lean so heavily on in TextPad. That would be a big disadvantage and I can't see me sticking with an editor that lacks that or the ability to add it somehow.

Yes, I've seen the holy war between vi and emacs. :) I've used emacs and found it was not to my liking. I love that it can easily be extended virtually without limit, but the fact that it uses Lisp to do the extending is a major disadvantage. In my opinion Lisp is a dumb language. It is basically like FORTH, but backwards. FORTH is one of the fastest, most capable, but one of the weirdest languages ever developed, because it uses reverse polish notation. This means it can do away with parentheses entirely. Unfortunately Lisp does the opposite and as a result has an absurd proliferation of parentheses.

My current favorite language is python. I have found an editor called Cute that uses python as its extension language, but the editor relies upon Qt libraries (not happy about that) and certain functions rely on something called scintilla, which seems to be a python library for text editing functions.

So... still not sure about which way to go. Text editing is what I do more than anything else, so it is a big part of my computer time. Much rides on avoiding a suboptimal solution. Looks like I need to get more info and sit down and make a list like Benjamin Franklin (one of my heroes) suggests.

Thanks for the comments. I appreciate it.