Editor

This board needs some threads. I'll start the mandatory editor flame thread that all programming discussions require.

Emacs r0x0rz. Vi sux0rz. Vi users eat aborted babies for breakfast.

Actually I use TECO, but that's beside the point.

Textpad pirated version. Yay!

Emacs's way of handling tabs pisses me off to no end. In fact, any editor that doesn't transparently substitute spaces for tabs pisses me off.

Sure, you can configure emacs to not use tabs, but its configurations are a bitch to set up.

I like to use DOS Edit, ah happy happy DOS. :-P

I used Emacs until I discovered Pico. Wonderful, wonderful Pico.

I like textpad, but I use windows. I suppose other text editors may be superior but textpad really rings my bell...

I like zile. Looks like EMACS, but a thousand times faster. (due to it being written completely in C). SciTE is also nice because it has the best syntax highlighting of any editor.

I use Context. It comes with syntax highlighting, multiple window tabs, and everything else a halfway decent programmer would need. It's also free.

>>5
Yeah, I like Nano, it's more evolved cousin, but given the choice I'll use it over EMACS and VI any day... It's just so much simpler. I can think about what I'm writing, instead of obscure hand combinations that give you cramp.

Now, if only there were line numbers...

nano rocks

For windows, i trust my ConText editor. Well if there isnt a good interface anway. C++ and stuff are done in there own env. Like dev-pp

ne
http://ne.dsi.unimi.it/

lol pico

I use context, too.

http://www.context.cx/

I'm also still using PFE32, though the development for that was halted a few years back :(

Never got around to learning proper vi; it drives me nuts and I'd rather use pico/nano.

Meh. Write your own text editor...
http://hunter.apana.org.au/~cjb/Code/ersatz.shar

I use XCode and pico.

UltraEdit when in Windows and nano/pico in Unix. I tried Context and while it's good, it didn't offer much for me to switch from UE.

>>14

I'm no programmer. I don't care to write a text editor, I'm not hardcore enough. =)

i'm sure you could edit the vi source to make 1 shortcut different. compile tada editor.

nano, pico, joe.. where's the difference?

>>19 They all blow equivalently?

>>18
You don't even need to compile it, that's what vimrc is for.

>>20
It's not just them. ALL editors suck in some way.

>>22 Truth. It`s all about picking the editor with the stuff you like, and the irritating points that don`t get on your nerves TOO much.

I like Pico because it`s simple. Type it, save it, compile it, run it. Ahhhh.

I hate Pico because its keybindings are just different enough from the Emacs standard to be extremely irritating.

Pico-pico nano ka?

Pikanyaa

>>24 It DID take a bit to get used to. But there sheer lack of any remotely complicating factors was enough to make me stick with it.

Has anyone attempted recreating DOS edit on *nix? Oh, I'd definitely go for that.

emacs is just plain huge, vi lives with dual-mode (I know you can disable it in VIM), pico/nano come pretty close, but my favorite simple CLI editor will probably remain DOS edit.

Hm, after years and years, I'd say that vim is my editor of choice.  I've worked out all of the more esoteric crap that gets new users, and can now work pretty quickly in it.

Really, if someone could merge elvis's editor modes (basic html viewer, hexeditor, and the like) into vim, it'd be my own personal nirvana.  I say that because I'd probably be the only one who'd use it ;)

>>29 it's called emacs :D

Meh. The "lol emacs is huge!" arguements went out the window when everyone started running web-browers and deskstop environments. "I don't use Emacs because it's too bloated just for simple text editing work. Here, I'll just boot my XP box and show you my GUI-ified version of VI that I use..."

By the same logic, there'd be no problem if grep or even ls took up 20MB. Obviously that's an extreme example, but the comment regarding emacs are perfectly valid. It is large.

For some people the added functionality may be worth it though.

I think a lot of emacs users use vi or something similarly small (eg e3) to do very quick edits because the editor runs as fast as a random shell command. But for real work, like editing code or writing documents (particularly with some sort of markup) emacs returns far more winnage in comparison with any other editor, despite the load time. When you discover that you have a repeatable sequence of text that can't be easily expressed in a regular expression, like a transformation of an entire paragraph over and over, then emacs is your friend since you can program everything. You don't have to rely on a script of commands, either, since your macro can be arbitrarily complex and still maintain readability (ever tried to read ex commands? or TECO?).

I use vi for short tasks like changing a variable in a config file. But I use emacs for anything that will take more than a couple seconds to do. It just makes the editing process easier.

Maybe someday someone will move the elisp core of emacs out into a library that can be loaded at boot time, but until then emacs users will have to put up with the load time. Actually, if the awful abortion that is the elisp kernel was completely redesigned from scratch like a real Lisp (and no more GCPRO!) then it might equal vi in speed. But it still suffers from being a 20 year old hunk of heavily hacked code.

If you want a real editor, though, try ZWEI on a Lisp Machine. Take your random program, position the cursor on the name of a system function you're curious about, and press Meta-period. ZWEI rattles the disk and loads the source file containing the definition of that function and puts the cursor at its start. And suppose you're halfway down some function call stack and you have no idea what SYS-RDTBL-TRANS does? Right click the name and select Edit Definition and voila you're in ZWEI looking at its source.

The Lisp Machines were fantastic systems, the programmer's nirvana.

One more Lisp Machine example. Oops, random badly coded program overflows stack space! Luckily, you're using a Real operating system. The debugger appears and politely asks you if you'd like to pick around in the internals to figure out what went wrong, or if you'd like to simply adjust the last few pointers on the stack and allocate some more stack space elsewhere until the problem goes away. To do the latter, just press the Resume key. A second later you're looking at a working program again, which doesn't know any better. You can cuss out the hacker who wrote the broken code later.

I've heard wonderous tales about Lisp Machines. Regrettably, most people here are probably too young to have ever used one, me included.

When LM users join up with VMS hackers in stating that unix was a horrid miscreation, you have to wonder what you missed...

I guess the closest we can get today is using Forth in Open Firmware, but lacking the nice editor and GUI.

I still use Emacs primarily when wearing the sysadmin hat here. The second of extra time it takes to load is inconsequental when even making small changes to config files (where I'd be spending at least several seconds to check-and-recheck I'm not about to bork a production server anyway..), if just for the automatic backup files, and being able to do a split-screen shells/edits/M-x man/whatever in the same 'perceptual context'.

>>36 <tidle>second ... backup<tidle>
Why the hell does this place need bbcode anyway...

The best (Windows) text editor I have ever used: http://www.editpadpro.com/
Looks like there's a linux version as well.

As for I, I prefer Vi ( Vim ) over all others ...

it's the fastest most minimalist editor of all, and once you get the hang of it, it just rocks  ^-^

I was raised on Notepad, but I find Vim more powerful.