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Last post Author Topic: The Best Of: text editors  (Read 136744 times)

utility man

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #75 on: May 04, 2009, 07:25 AM »
It's been pointed out to me that Emeditor does support native file comparison.
Haven't checked this out yet but appologies in advance if my original post was in error.

utility man

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #76 on: May 04, 2009, 07:34 AM »
Jussi Jumppanen
Thanks for your reply. It's always good to hear from the author's perspective.
I did trial Zeus a year or so ago and, to be honest, I can't recall why I dismissed it.
I may be confusing it with slickedit, but I seem to remember cost being an obstacle. Again, I'll check this out and re-post.
Admittedly, it is difficult to keep up because pro-active authors are keen to deliver updates but users are not always aware of them.
Apologies if, by not including it, I have sold your product short.  I will check it out again.
Stay tuned.

tranglos

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #77 on: May 04, 2009, 07:39 AM »
It's been pointed out to me that Emeditor does support native file comparison.

There is a Diff plugin for EmEditor, letting you compare two of the open files:
01-diff-emeditor.png

EditPad Pro lets you compare the current file with its backup. In both cases differing lines are shown in blocks one above another, not side by side:
02-diff-editpadpro.png

Both implementations are very, very basic - nowhere near what dedicated diffing programs such as Beyond Compare offer.

mwb1100

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #78 on: May 04, 2009, 11:58 AM »
but I seem to remember cost being an obstacle

Hey Jussi - maybe a DonationCoder discount is in order (can't hurt to ask, right?).

urlwolf

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #79 on: May 04, 2009, 05:24 PM »
Two things that I really need and not many editors provide: ctags integration, and split window so you can show two files. Vim does that, but not many others.

Having mercurial integrated would be a plus, too.

tranglos

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #80 on: May 04, 2009, 05:31 PM »
Two things that I really need and not many editors provide: ctags integration, and split window so you can show two files. Vim does that, but not many others.

TextPad and EmEditor also do the split window (EmEditor can even split the screen four ways).

And I'm with you on ctags - it would be useful for non-programming purposes too, as long as it's efficient with large files.

mwb1100

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #81 on: May 04, 2009, 05:44 PM »
Vi (and its variants), emacs, UltraEdit, Zeus, EmEditor and others support (or claim to support) ctags.

SlickEdit supports its own tags implementation (which is at least as functional as ctags).

urlwolf

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #82 on: May 04, 2009, 06:25 PM »
Emeditor split window (4 ways) is NOT what I'm talking about.
You cannot put a different file in each split, can you? So it's useless to me.

Another must for me is a search that highlights all occurrences and leaves them there while I move. Not many editors have that (notepad, emeditor, hippo). Introduced by vim.

tranglos

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #83 on: May 04, 2009, 07:30 PM »
Emeditor split window (4 ways) is NOT what I'm talking about.
You cannot put a different file in each split, can you? So it's useless to me.

Ah, I see. I understood split screen as referring to multiple views of a single file - somehow the "fancier" thing.

I suppose the ability to see multiple files side by side went away with the appearance of tabs. At the same time Microsoft started telling developers that MDI was now a bad thing.

TextPad can still do that, since it's an MDI app, but that's probably less useful than a real split screen. EmEditor does a strange thing there. It has what looks like a standard set of MDI commands, but they don't work quite like that. It tells you to disable tabs (manually, under the Window menu), and when you do, it shows each file in a separate program window - i.e. nowhere near a split screen.

Jussi Jumppanen

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #84 on: May 04, 2009, 09:23 PM »
Two things that I really need and not many editors provide: ctags integration

In Zeus any file that is added to the project/workspace is automatically tagged (i.e Workspace, New menu to create a workspace and add files to a project in the workspace). The results of the tagging is displayed in the class browser panel.

Also the tags information is automatically updated each time the file is saved to disk or the workspace is opened.

and split window so you can show two files. Vim does that, but not many others.
Since Zeus is a MDI application it can display any number of files side by side (i.e. use the Window, Tile menu)

It can also display two locations of the same file (i.e. the document view can be split into two views).

Jussi Jumppanen

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #85 on: May 04, 2009, 09:33 PM »
Apologies if, by not including it, I have sold your product short I will check it out again.
Absolutely no apology required. Zeus is not that well known.

I’d love to hear your feedback regarding Zeus be it good or bad or indifferent ;)

utility man

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #86 on: May 04, 2009, 10:17 PM »
OK, I've downloaded Zeus [v 3.96s] with the intention of giving it a bit of time.

The Positives
Scripting looks to be very well implemented. record/save/edit/replay is intuitive and immediately useful.

Multi-line find/replace using regex works as it should.

block/column selection can be controlled by both keyboard and mouse. I wish that emeditor had keyboard control like Zeus, Ultraedit, Jedit, etc.

external tools can prompt for parameters before execution.

The Negatives
Unfortunately, I have given up on it fairly quickly. I'm sorry if this seems superficial and I hope that other users of this product respond with their positive experiences.

The help file lacks detail and also contains inaccuracies [see line wrap below]. There are options that I'm unfamiliar with and I could not work out their meaning from the help file [e.g. CUA mouse marking mode, Brief Column Paste mode, etc]. It's a trial and error exercise to work out what they are.

The column mode doesn't work as completely as in other editors. You cannot select a zero width column. You cannot type or paste text into each line of the selected column.

I could not for the life of me work out how to temporarily change the syntax [aka document type] of the current buffer. It seems to be bound to file extensions which, if true, is completely useless to me.

I could not find how to toggle word wrap [aka line wrap] on/off. According to the help file there should be an option in the edit menu, but it isn't there.
Therefore, I could not find out whether word wrap honored indentation levels. This is a very handy feature in some other editors.

The diff function doesn't display side by side and I couldn't find an option to change this behaviour.

Zeus has built-in sorting and can also extracting lines containing a search string. It does this by wrapping a gui dialog around the fgrep tool.
Sorry, couldn't find how to extract matching lines.

Opened 10-20MB files quickly but choked completely attempting to open a 1.4GB text file. Sounds extreme, but a basic requirement in my field.

No recent file list in File menu.

As previously mentioned, no print preview.

Jussi Jumppanen

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #87 on: May 04, 2009, 11:48 PM »
The help file lacks detail and also contains inaccuracies [see line wrap below].

I can't argue about that. The Zeus help file is in desperate need of a re-write :(

It's a trial and error exercise to work out what they are.
Or posting a question to the Zeus forum or sending the question to e-mail support ;)

The column mode doesn't work as completely as in other editors. You cannot select a zero width column.

If you use the Edit, Text Marking, Toggle Column Marking menu followed by a few down arrows and you will have a column of zero width.

If you then type left arrow, the highlight changes color and this indicates you now have a column of none zero width.

You cannot type or paste text into each line of the selected column.
That is correct.

I could not for the life of me work out how to temporarily change the syntax [aka document type] of the current buffer.

You have to save the file to disk with a given file extension.

There is also an option to set the default File, New file extension using the Options, Editor Options, General panel.

It seems to be bound to file extensions which, if true, is completely useless to me.

That is correct. All syntax highlighting, compile, tool, build configuration details are bound to the file extension.

This configuration model makes it possible to have the same Zeus interface behave differently for different file extensions.

For example assume a c/c++ file is active. Hitting the compile button will run the c/c++ compiler.

Now assume a HTML file is active. That exact same compile button will now validate the HTML.

In both cases all errors get displayed in an errors output window and the user can use this window to navigate to the errors and warnings using the same next/previous errors button of the toolbar.

I could not find how to toggle word wrap [aka line wrap] on/off.

There is a keyboard function called LineWrapToggleEx that will do this.

So for example you could bind this function to keyboard key.

 
The diff function doesn't display side by side and I couldn't find an option to change this behaviour.
In the Options, Editor Options, Miscellaneous panel there is an option to run an external diff, for example something like this: windiff.exe $f1 $f2

What this means is you can run the diff in Zeus but you have the option to view the results of the difference in any external difference tool.

Sorry, couldn't find how to extract matching lines.
It should be as simple as using the Edit, Find in Files menu to bring up the dialog and then do:

1) Type in the what ever string you want found in the Find What field.
2) Type *.* in the File Filter
3) Type in the directory into the Directory field

But one thing to remember is the \ character is used to designate an end of line marker via \n so if you actually want to search for a \ character you need to type in \\.

Opened 10-20MB files quickly but choked completely attempting to open a 1.4GB text file. Sounds extreme, but a basic requirement in my field.
Zeus is an in memory editor so it will generally not have a problem loading multi-megabyte files provided the machine has enough RAM.

But as you have found gigabyte files put too much demand on the system RAM for them to load.

But I would have thought there wouldn't be many text editors that could handle the editing of a 1.4GB text file.

The only one I know of is Vedit.

No recent file list in File menu.
There should be a recent file list in File menu.

If a file is closed that file will be added to the File menu MRU list.

The MRU list is also attached to the workspace (configurable) which means each workspace has its own MRU list.

Jussi Jumppanen

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #88 on: May 04, 2009, 11:53 PM »
but I seem to remember cost being an obstacle
Hey Jussi - maybe a DonationCoder discount is in order (can't hurt to ask, right?).

There is a Zeus Lite version that is free of charge: http://www.zeusedit.com/lite/


kartal

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #89 on: May 04, 2009, 11:58 PM »
I think Zeus is a general purpose text editor with programming slant, I do not think it is supposed to load 1.5 gb file.  I am not sure if anyone ever written a 1.5gb code in one single text file.

ivery, just curious what kind of field are you in? Are you dealing with huge hex files, database files?

utility man

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #90 on: May 05, 2009, 12:09 AM »
ivery, just curious what kind of field are you in? Are you dealing with huge hex files, database files
Our systems input text files that have been produced from other systems. They are regularly in the 1-7 GB range.
Granted that it's not often that we would need to actually edit these files [as opposed to viewing and searching them], but in an ideal world the text editor would enable this function. i.e. you would not need to use a separate file viewer. Ultraedit handles this well, and Emeditor isn't far behind it.

Allen Dang

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #91 on: May 05, 2009, 01:34 AM »
Seems no one mentioned about the "Programmer's Notepad", I like this very much!

It is highly customizable, and the most important thing is, it allows to extend the feature with Python!

kartal

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #92 on: May 05, 2009, 02:14 AM »
ivery, my main tools are Eclipse and Vim at the moment. Personally I do not need to dissect files like that so anything that is better than notepad is good for me :)

Just curious since I have never tried Vim with big files. Have you tested Vim or Emacs for your needs?


urlwolf

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #93 on: May 05, 2009, 05:12 AM »
ivery, just curious what kind of field are you in? Are you dealing with huge hex files, database files
Our systems input text files that have been produced from other systems. They are regularly in the 1-7 GB range.
Granted that it's not often that we would need to actually edit these files [as opposed to viewing and searching them], but in an ideal world the text editor would enable this function. i.e. you would not need to use a separate file viewer. Ultraedit handles this well, and Emeditor isn't far behind it.


Then, the only sane option is emEditor, I think. It's designed for those cases.

wraith808

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #94 on: May 05, 2009, 10:22 AM »
V would be a good option for viewing them- then launch them into another editor for editing... just a thought.  It's what I do, and it works great.

wraith808

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #95 on: May 05, 2009, 10:23 AM »
but I seem to remember cost being an obstacle
Hey Jussi - maybe a DonationCoder discount is in order (can't hurt to ask, right?).

There is a Zeus Lite version that is free of charge: http://www.zeusedit.com/lite/


-Jussi Jumppanen (May 04, 2009, 11:53 PM)

But I don't mind paying... I want the latest.  And a discount would make it a no-brainer.  ;)

mfwiniberg

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #96 on: May 06, 2009, 06:37 AM »
I do a lot of development (in Java - JSP and AJAX, C, C++ and PHP) and currently tend to use Netbeans because it integrates everthing together so well, but it's editor is poor compared with the various Brief derivatives.

For all non-IDE based work (16 bit C, C++ etc) I use Slickedit. Expensive, but has just about all the features mentioned as being favourites in the various editors discussed (with the exception of breadcrumbs) - even including the outer tag xml hilights etc. If anything, Slickedit is so powerful and complex you never get as far as realising that it does what you want or can be made to do so, because you spend so much time fiddling with other bits of it you never get any work done 8)

wasker

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #97 on: May 10, 2009, 08:51 PM »
Nice review. I'd also recommend you guys to look at TwistPad -- I love this editor. The most Visual Studio-like environment from what I tried.

mrainey

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #98 on: May 13, 2009, 11:46 AM »
For what it's worth, UltraEdit has introduced a non-U3 portable version.  The first forum post about it mentions faster startup.

http://www.ultraedit...oducts/mobility.html
Software For Metalworking
http://closetolerancesoftware.com

mwb1100

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Re: The Best Of: text editors
« Reply #99 on: May 17, 2009, 01:20 PM »
OK, I just tried EmEditor...it is REALLY fast.  The fastest one I've tried as far as loading.  I like it a lot.

Be careful of the license.  If you install EmEditor on a corporate computer, you have no right to also install it at home without paying for a second license.  If you only use it at home, you can (IIRC) install it on up to 5 computers of your own.
Interestingly, the actual license that's displayed when you install EmEditor doesn't say anything about being limited to 5 computers (or one computer for commercial use).  The only restriction it mentions is:

LICENSEE agrees to restrict the use of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT to him or herself.

And there's a bunch of stuff that says that you are only permitted to use registration keys that are yours and that you have to keep the registration key private.  There's also a bunch of stuff about how EmuraSoft can terminate the agreement for any reason  - so I guess if you install on more than 5 machines that would be grounds for canceling the license (since no grounds are needed anyway).

But, the manual does clearly outline what what you mentioned so I suppose that's what EmuraSoft intends.