Drac Smith

Authored Comments

The Mac has an awesome text editor (text wrangler) that I'd love to see ported to Linux. Low resources, lots of features. Works great for just text and simple coding projects. The interface is intuitive and has pretty much any feature I'd want for something not better opened in a word processor. I actually found myself using my Mac as my primary text editor because of Text Wrangler and bought the upgraded version. BBEdit is the free version.

Text editing is a bit of a mess on Linux. You have wonderful word processors like Libreoffice, Kword, and others. Problem is they are very resource heavy. Leave one open for a few days and they'll suck gigs of RAM dry. Kate has a nice interface but is full of memory leaks. So bad that it becomes as resource intensive as a word processor in a day or two. The Gnome Kate imitation is useless. Gedit works mostly, though it likes losing changes if you reboot, accidentally close the editor or similar problems.

Kedit I loved beyond words when it was part of the KDE suite. I could have literally hundreds of Kedit windows open at the same time and leave them open for months and not see any memory leaks or issues. If I rebooted every edit was preserved. It had all the basic editing features I needed for most tasks. I used Kedit heavily as a Sysadmin for config files, keeping schemas open for DBs I maintained, quick code edits, and as an author I was able to keep dozens of char sheets open and arranged for easy access. Kedit only exists now under Trinity and is a bit more resource intensive than the old Kedit. Still it's my go to for editing.

I rarely edit in the CLI any more. If it's more than a couple lines and on a local machine I just pull it up in the GUI. I never found anything but hatred for VI. Just way too much memorization. While there are some good CLI editors out there, they do not come default with most distros. So basically I'm left with Pico/Nano or struggling with VI's obtuse keystroke combos. So I just don't mess with any edits in the CLI anymore.

Linux still lags badly in IDEs for languages. A lot of text editors allow for syntax completion but I am spoiled. I spent years using Borlands IDEs, then I spent a grand and worth every penny of it on a high end multi-language coding IDE, can't remember the name, but I loved that IDE. I have never been a M$ fan, but the IDE in visual studio rocked. Too bad the compiler was such garbage. Gambas has a great IDE but it only works for a VB clone. I'd love to see the Gambas IDE for languages like Python, C++ and PHP. Gnome has a couple visual builders that work great for designing screens but lack any teeth when it comes to adding code to them. They also lack the ability to create Desktop independent code or use other desktops libs for the visual parts of the code. It'd be really nice if things like Web, Android, Mac and Windoze compiles.

What I like about a good IDE is it helps but doesn't get in the way. That way I can focus on the code and program flow. Design the GUI using a GUI instead of having to compile and tediously move locations around in code or just trust the OS to put things in a way that the users can use the code. You see so many people today using Wordpress just because it makes designing web interfaces easy. Problem is it carries with it so many severe limitations on what you can do code wise. What's the alternatives? You can buy a propitiatory expensive IDE that only runs on the web itself and leaves your HTML piled knee deep in garbage you have to take out, or something absolutely primitive like Bluefish. That or hack it out in a text editor and spend 90% of your time dinking with CSS and javascript and still not getting it just how you wanted it and having to have 3 different code bases as what shows up on android is totally different from a PC browser and different still on an Iphone.

Efforts to do it all are abysmal failures. Sure you can laboriously hack out stuff on something like Emacs, but I don't have time for the kind of work involved with configuring Emacs to something usable and the very manual nature of coding with something like Emacs. I'm spoiled, I want my editor to have color syntax so I can quickly and easily spot missed brackets, parms, etc, I want to edit, compile and debug in the same interface. In particular to be able to step through the code and look at the contents of variables. Sure you can dump that to a log file or screen display but why? It's code you'll need to pull later and IDEs since the 90s have been capable of this. Makes it so much easier to debug when you don't have to switch between 4 or 5 windows to edit, compile, run and debug your app as you are working on it. Other than Gambas I've not found anything on Linux you can do this with.

Writing software just doesn't exist. So much so that Piers Anthony had custom software written for him on his Linux system so he could write the way he wants too. Some authors cover their walls with character sheets, storyboards, timelines, etc. My I cover a desktop with it using Kedit, but that's really lacking in important features. Kate and Kate clones really don't do what I need. They are more of a primitive coding IDE and resource heavy. When you have literally 200 char sheets you want to switch quickly and easily between without losing your writing momentum they are just not practical. Me I keep a stack of Kedit windows with places, another stack with people, and in seconds I can look up say the history of a person or place as I've built it, or if I'm writing non-fiction I can have my references and snippets open in layers of windows for rapid access. If I have to stop, open a file, scroll to the place in the file I need, I might as well go take a break as I've lost all momentum. I'm so ADD I might have forgotten what I'm looking for by the time I get the file open lol.

Then there's the matter of script editors. I was going to try to port one of the 3 that Hollywood will accept from the Mac to Linux but the Python mess combined with personal emergencies shelved that idea. Linux has no editor that Hollywood, agents, etc will accept the output from. That in spite of there being an open source editor in Python for the Mac that Hollywood does accept. No Linux editor that I'm aware of will output in the formats that Hollywood and similar places accept.

Then you get the odd stuff that things like Word Perfect used to do nicely in the 80s. There was even a Linux version of Word Perfect at one time. No idea why none of that was incorporated into something else. People like law offices, creating custom reports, and a dozen other uncommon but important if you need it features that sort of fell out of use in WPs. Linux could support that since Linux doesn't force a complete rewrite every few years for the latest version of Windoze.

Anyway that's my 2 cents on editors.