March 24, 2005

Editors

Stuck home with a nasty cold/cough/throat infection just in time for Easter. My body always knows when it's time to wind down, kick back and relax ... and somehow lines up a total collapse.

Since I can't go to the pub, I decided to write up some of my thoughts on editors, following on from the frustrated developer post. So without further ado, random rough notes on Mac editors. Let me know if I'm missing anything obvious or if I made any mistakes.

Ironically right now I'm leaning toward JEdit again, because for all-round use it's the best.

Update: thanks to Jeremy for reminding me I'd forgotten SubEthaEdit, and telling me about the split-screen option in BBEdit / TextWrangler. I'm also studying this article on Cocoa Development in Emacs to see if I can pick up some tips on using it ...

Posted by savs at March 24, 2005 9:52 PM
Comments

Not tried the ObjC Emacs yet (doesn't run on GNUstep releases, I'm told), but mainstream Emacs uses c-X 3 to do a vertical split and M-x customize to get into the config screens which have fonts in there somewhere. I guess you've probably tried that, wise old man.

I keep emacs around for two reasons above all: using ediff mode for merges and the way you can have the same file open in multiple windows, even when those windows are on different displays... use a dummy "meeting" user login and it's collaborative editing. As you may remember, wily is the editor of choice here (or vi on the console).

Posted by: MJR at March 25, 2005 7:44 PM

Savs, maybe you should add Xcode into the list - esp. if you are coding more Java than HTML - although AFAIR it colour codes HTML fine... The project pane is then cool for selecting between multiple files - even in web heirarchies...

Posted by: Adrian Bool at March 29, 2005 2:22 PM