Techies Only

[lostcarpark]

I'm looking for a new text editor. If you're not into programming and/or web design, you probably won't be interested...

At the moment I'm using Programmer's File Editor (PFE). It's very good, fantastically customisable, and free. Unfortunately the guy who wrote it stopped developing it in about 1996, and it's now showing it's age.

Some things I really like about PFE:

• The wide range of customisations and settings.


• The way I can record a very quick macro (one button to start recording, one button to stop recording, one key to run macro), use it to repeat an action a bunch of times, then throw it away.


• Having different settings for different file types (I edit lots of different kinds of files, and don't want it to treat a C file the same way as a HTML file.


• The ability to handle different line end characters (open a Unix file in Notepad and it doesn't look pretty).


• Fully customisable keyboard shortcuts.


• Copes with lots of open files easily.


• Line numbers. Probably goes without saying, but it's really useful to be able to see line numbers at the start of every line.


• Help file integration - being able to integrate language specific help files.


• Bracket matching - this is very handy, though probably could me implemented in a friendlier way.


• The "Set Directory to Current File" is really handy. You open a file in the directory you're working in, and set it to be the current directory, which means that directory will be the default when saving new files.

Here are some things I'd like to have in a new editor:

• Unicode support. This is the one thing I cannot do without any more. Needs to support ASCII (preferably with multi-codepage support), UTF8, UC16, and probably a few others I haven't encountered yet.


• Goes with above - easy way of picking characters not on the keyboard.


• XML Validation (and possibly HTML checking and tidying functions).


• Code colouration - not essential, but nice to have.


• Word wrapping - again, not essential, as most of my files are code/HTML and best viewed in non-wrapped mode, it's not a big issue to open text documents in Notepad.


• Tag matching - an extension of bracket matching above, make it easy to match open and closing HTML/XML tags.

I'd like to hear what text editors you guys use, and why. I'm probably missing a few features from your must-have lists. This is probably because I didn't think of them rather than because I don't want them.

I'd be happy to pay for an editor that can do everything I'm used to, but add the features I need and as many of the ones I'd like as possible. However, if there's a free one, that would be better still. And if it had source code available, I'd be in heaven!

There's probably someone who'll say Notpad is the only text editor you need, and they're probably right, but if you use a really good editor for a while you won't want to go back.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Comments

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

I use textpad but I severly underuse its many features. It might be worth you giving it a look - I'm just really keen on the multiple undo feature it has. You can download an eval copy that never expires but has a habit of throwing nag screens at you regularly until you register it. Can't remember the url for it but a google for "textpad" should take you pretty much straight there.

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

Multiple Undo is another feature I take for granted. Though now you remind me, what would be really cool is an undo that let you undo something you did ages ago, but keep all the changes you made after that... Is that asking too much?

Anyway, one vote for TextPad. I think I've downloaded it before. Any chance you'd elabourate on what you like about it?

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Elaborate? But I already said everything!

As I say, I barely used the many features. The nice word wrap was handy, the multi-undo. *shrug* I don't ask a lot of my text editors. I seem to remember it was pretty cheap compared to equivalents at the time. Homesite, which Poppy mentions, was very popular at work among some but I never used it myself.

[flick.livejournal.com]

what would be really cool is an undo that let you undo something you did ages ago, but keep all the changes you made after that...

That's something I'd like in everything, never mind a text editor...

*slinks away to the non-techie threads*

[hddod.livejournal.com]

I'd automatically say "what's wrong with vim?!" at this point, but reading on from behind the cut tag I'll keep quiet. :)

When I used to work as a web designer and was forced to use Windows, I used to swear by a programme called HomeSite. It was as near to a basic text editor as I could find, but had all the nicities like validation, syntax highlighting, tag matching, customisable keyboard shortcuts...

This was four or five years ago though and things have changed a great deal since then. I still have a copy but it's from 1998 and new versions are probably massively different to mine!

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Homesite's at version five or so at the moment - still has one or two anoying bugs (loses scrollbars sometimes if you do the collapsing text thing), but it's pretty good.

For generic editing - if you're not a member of the churches of vi or emacs - textpad is pretty good. You can download lots of different syntax coloring sets and assorted other add-ony bits, too.

Both of the above will let you use regular expressions in search/replace, and across many files at a time at that - which is how I stupidly turned a month-long contract into less than a fortnight by finishing all the work too soon...

[lproven.livejournal.com]

No idea if it's your sort of thing - I'm a high-level WYSIWYG kinda guy myself, and my favourite editor remains Aldus PageMaker - but you might find it worth looking at jEdit, recently recommended by Daniel P. Benjamin's immaculately stylish HiveLogic.

And no, I'm not going to advocate something Linuxey. Me, I think the rockingest desktop OSes are RISC OS, Taos, EPOC and of course Jagwyre.

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

Aldus Pagemaker? It hasn't been called that for quite a while! What version are you using?

Someone suggested an open-source editor called SciTE on another forum, which I've been having a look at. The obvious issue with it is refraining from pronouncing the "Sc" as "Sh"...

Re: characteristic ...

[lproven.livejournal.com]

I'm a traditionalist. Aldus wrote great code, Adobe produced powerful, flexible, capable and utterly impenetrable code, like Photoshop and Postscript.

I've seen PageMaker since Adobe got its hands on it. It's deteriorated.

Re: characteristic ...

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. A lot of the stuff Adobe changed is decidedly quirky. The printing functionality springs to mind - just try tabbing around the Print dialogue box and you'll see what I mean. And try to set up a transparent bitmap... it's not pretty.

I'm trying to remember what the last Aldus version was, though. Was it even 32-bit?

Re: characteristic ...

[lproven.livejournal.com]

Good question. I think 6 was the first Adobe-badged one. Pagemaker 5 was an Aldus Win95 product, I think...

Re: characteristic ...

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

I remember Pagemaker 3.0 was a neat little app that could (just about) work in 640KB of memory on a 286 (running Windows 2) with 720x350 Hercules mono graphics... Those were the days!

If it 6 that Adobe rebadged, then I'm afraid I've blamed Adobe for some of Aldus's sins, and some of the quirks I mentioned go back further. I have no time for the Wizards and things Adobe have been adding in the recent versions, however.

I'd like to have a look at InDesign, which I've heard good things about.

Re: characteristic ...

[lproven.livejournal.com]

Ahhhhh. :¬)

In those days, I used it on a Real Computer™. One of these.

Raw Computer Power, indeed. (© Guy Kewney.)

Re: characteristic ...

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... in those days I still did a lot of stuff on my Sinclair QL.

Re: characteristic ...

[lproven.livejournal.com]

But not DTP, I'll warrant...?

Got one, actually. Only bought it 3-4y ago. Want badly to add a hard disk, somehow... :¬)

Re: characteristic ...

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

Well, there was a DTP program for the QL, but it worked by treating the page as a very large bitmap, which is kinda missing the point of DTP in my opinion!

It's certainly possible to add a hard disk, if you can track down the right expansion card.

I have a fairly nifty QL emulator for the PC. Well, actually I have two, and I wish the best bits of both could be combined. Needless to say, a fast PC can emulate a very fast QL!

Re: characteristic ...

[lproven.livejournal.com]

Aye, but it's like old Amiga stuff. You can get it new, just, but it'll cost yer, guv.

My Miggy 1200 cost me - one old proprietary Compaq server 100base-T card and an NT4 CD. Its 68030 accelerator and SCSI interface cost £45, enabling me to stick in 8MB more Fast RAM; the 400MB HD I had anyway. The cable for that was £3.

That's a lot of Amiga for £50.

My QL, with tons of software, manuals, dual floppies, parallel port, maxed-out RAM and all was £20. To add a Qubide IDE interface would cost 2-3× that. :¬(

Re: characteristic ...

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

That's a lot of computer!

My main problem with acquiring lots of old computers is that I don't have space for any. My QL, my Spectrum 128 and my ZX81 are all in my parents' attic.

Which is why I prefer to stick to emulators. However, a modern PC emulates a QL so fast that I had to modify the source code to stop the kkkkkkkkkeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyssssss from repeating too fast!

If you come across a cheap Z88 portable, pick it up for me, would you?

Re: characteristic ...

[lproven.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, I know that feeling!

And for me at least, emulators just aren't the same, somehow.

For Z88s, try here.

Re: characteristic ...

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

Not the same, no. Can never really capture the feeling of the good old days, can you?

But you can make up for it in other ways... like what if the QL had a really fast processor, and great graphics, and loads of memory and stuff. When you have the emulator source code, you can have lots of fun!

It would be fun to dig out the real QL, though. Any idea if it can be made work with a VGA monitor, which would cut out a lot of the space requirement? And did anyone ever add ethernet?

Thanks for the link, but having to organise shipping takes all the fun out of it. Much rather stumble on one in a car boot sale.

[damienw]

Emacs.

Use an external validator for sgml/xml.

Recording macros might be tricky, but anything you can do with a programming language you can incorporate, especially if that programming language is lisp.

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

Thanks, but I'm not convinced.

My only experience of Emacs was on a text-only Unix terminal session. I found it even more painful than Vi. I can accept that the GUI versions may be an improvement, but I won't be easily convinced.

I could accept using an external validator, providing the editor can call it automatically without having to type stupid command lines, and capture the results so I can easily corrolate errors with the source. However, I'd much rather a clever integrated checker which highlights errors in the source.

As for macros, I really think these are essential. A macro is not simply a keystroke recorder. It really needs to be integrated with the editor so it can respond to unexpected events. There's nothing worse than an error occurring in the middle of a macro, and the recorder keeps on going, making a right mess of things!

But instead of telling me how to get around its shortcomings, tell me what's good about it. Maybe I could yet be convinced.