Grex Jellyware Conference

Item 121: Fav editors

Entered by veek on Fri Dec 10 11:24:42 2010:

1 new of 32 responses total.


#15 of 32 by kentn on Sat Dec 11 18:22:53 2010:

I use Vim/gVim as well because I've used vi and vi-work-alikes for
many years now.  As bellstar says, it works on both Unix-likes and
Windows (and Mac) so I can use it on just about any system I'm on in
my normal work day.  It works just fine from a usb drive, as well (see
http://portableapps.com/news/2010-09-20_-_gvim_portable_7.3 for one
such version).

Vim has its own internal scripting language and also can link to other
languages, like perl, python and ruby if compiled with that support,
so those languages can be used to operate on the files being edited.
The GUI version (there are several, including GTK) of vim has pull
down menus, syntax highlighting, built-in diff/compare capabaility,
etc.  You can add your own functions to the menus quite easily.  A
reasonably large community of users has formed around vim and this has
resulted in a lot of scripts, color schemes, usage tips, etc.  See
http://www.vim.org/ which is also the place to get the latest version.

The classic Internet editor war is between emacs and vi and there's
really no winner, although some people find ways of counting users to
show their editor is the winner.  The most useful position is use what
you like and what you can effectively use to do your work.

In the last 10 years many other editors have been developed that are
also usable.  At the same time, some editor projects cease development
if they don't get enough support. Thus, it can be quite confusing
looking at editors if you don't have a favorite already, and you can
spend a lot of time finding one you like.  There's quite often some
feature you'd like to have that's not in your current editor & that
leads you to try something else.  And of course, if you work for someone
else, you possibly are required to use an editor that is different from
what you like.  This is where having an editor that will run off a usb
drive is handy, if there is no prohibition against that form of usage.

A lot depends on how you got started in computing, whether on command
line or GUI or Windows/Mac or Unix.  Not all editors are cross-platform,
so if that is a criterion for you, you'll be somewhat limited in your
choice of a single editor (else, you'll switch editors when you switch
platforms which can be confusing).


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