Cross-platform Coders Editor

[Ehtyar]

Hi all.

Off the bat, I'm not looking for an IDE (for anyone who is I recommend Code::Blocks).

What I'm looking for is a text editor that is friendly to code, you know..syntax hilighting, regex, maybe code folding, scripting (yay perl!), command line piping etc etc. Notepad++ for Windows and Linux if you will (I so don't care about Mac compatibility). ATM it looks like gvim is the winner (if anyone mentions emacs, your shoes will spontaneously catch fire), but I wanted to check things out before I commit myself. All suggestions are appreciated guys, and IDE comments are welcome, though that's not what I am after.

Thanks, Ehtyar.

[Jibz]

*puts fire extinguisher next to chair*

What about emacs?

[ewemoa]

I tried out gvim for a while and have currently stopped (I did learn quite a bit and have built up a vimrc file, though it was only tested for Windows) -- if you go that route, I'm interested in hearing about your progress.

For the moment I have reverted to ***** (trying to avoid unnecessary combustion), but mostly because the brain I'm currently using happens to already be wired for it -- accident of history you see

I too am quite interested in other alternatives.

[Ehtyar]

Well....being that both the first and second replies mentioned the unspeakable, I guess i need to open my mind a little more. Perhaps, if I suspend the spontaneous fire-catching, someone would be willing to tell me what specifically they like about Emacs?

Ehtyar.

[ewemoa]

There's plenty to complain about the unspeakable -- but since you didn't ask for that, how about if I list some of what I find useful?

• dabbrev-expand - I do basically all of my completion with this (whether it's in an ordinary buffer or the minibuffer) - bound to M-/ (Alt-/) by default
• describe-key - find out what command a given key sequence is bound to
• describe-function - find documentation for a function (that is, for something accessible via the editor)
• recentf-* - access to recently opened files
• rect.el - manipulation of rectangular regions (e.g. kill-rectangle, yank-rectangle)
• column-number-mode - displaying current column number
• which-func-mode - displaying a guess as to the current function where the cursor is at
• speedbar - a sort of fake side panel for file, directory, and tag access
• various programming language modes - recently I've been using one of the JavaScript modes and a PHP mode (I've been secretly plotting with mouser to see if the "Ignore Thread" feature for SMF is worth doing)
• occur - showing lines in the current buffer which matched some regular expression
• query-replace* - can probably guess this one, right?
• isearch-* - incremental searching
• imenu - for jumping to specific locations in the buffer (e.g. to particular function definitions)
• find-file-at-point - attempt to open a file, guessing a default from text around where the cursor is
• shell - some kind of access to a command prompt
• goto-line -
• kill-line, yank-line - cut and paste line
• split-window-* - horizontal and vertical window splitting
• make-frame-command - creating additional frames (more commonly referred to outside of this editor as windows)
• untabify
• undo
• next-buffer, previous-buffer

A little less specifically:

• narrowing a buffer - temporarily having a buffer seem as if only a portion of it exists
• multi-lingual display and input
• syntax highlighting
• bookmarks
• http://emacswiki.org/ - I think one of the reasons I was willing to consider using this editor again was the birth and development of this site

Since I don't have a problem w/ lispy languages, it's usually not too bad to add functionality I'd like to have if I don't happen to find a way to do it with something someone else has written.

[housetier]

I recommend gvim.

And while you are at it: I also recommend vimperator for firefox.

[ewemoa]

May be it's already well-known to folks who've posted in this thread, but perhaps for future reference it's worth bring up the following thread concerning vim usage tips

https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=6400.0

I found the following particularly useful during my recent vim trial:

http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

[Ehtyar]

Well, it looks like jEdit, of all apps, is winning at the moment, gvim was just too far outside my comfort zone. I probably haven't explored it to it's fullest yet, but it seems like Notepad++ with proper regex and more powerful macros to me. The only thing that bugs me is that you can't select lines of text from the gutter, and from a feature request I read that won't be happening at all due to a conflict it would cause with the way code folding works (ironically I don't use code folding at all, though I probably should). Anyway, I'll keep this thread updated if my path changes.

Ehtyar.

[Armando]

Hi Ethyar,
Sorry For bringing back this old thread... but... Did you stick to jEdit, finally (seems a bit slower than Notepad++) ? Do you like it ?
I like Notepad++, but I'm having issues with its amputated regex functionality.


(PS : Hello to all. have been seriously busy since last September -- computer science + directing a play... Less busy now.)