Not to restart the editor wars or anything, but...

[liv]

I'm working on some journal layouts for Dreamwidth, and it's getting to the point where it's mildly annoying to work in a non-specialist text editor. In specific, I want to be able to do the split screen thing that you can do in Word, so that I can simultaneously see where I set up properties at the top of the several thousand line code, and where I use the properties in the body. (I do know enough not to write code in Word itself!) Also, if I had a widget that would automatically colour in my brackets for me so I can see at a glance if they match, that would be kind of nice too.

Does anyone have any suggestions for an editor with both those features? It would be ideal if it runs under Windows, but DOS or in a browser will do at a pinch.

(When this is done, the same property is going to have the same name no matter what layout you use, and most except a few very specialist features are going to be common to all layouts. The guiding principle is that you shouldn't have to choose between form and function. The next pass is going to do the same for CSS classes, making them consistent across all site-provided layouts. Did I mention I love Dreamwidth?)

Comments

[emma]

EditPlus2 was my editor of choice when I was doing much coding. There's also an s2 plugin thingy for it that will colour things accordingly. No idea how DW code is going to differ from that though. I also can't guarantee the split window thing, but I definitely recommend checking it out. Shareware, but of the popup on start type, not limited trial.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/) can have multiple views onto a single file, either in separate windows or split within a single window. It runs fine under Windows. It has HTML and CSS support. (And no, you don't actually have to learn Lisp in order to use it.)

[sunflowerinrain.livejournal.com]

{{Emacs}}

[synergetic.livejournal.com]

gvim will do everything you have requested from a text editor.

A drive-by software recommendation :)

[j4.livejournal.com]

You might like TextPad (http://www.textpad.com/), which will do multi-window split-screen, syntax highlighting, and full regex find-and-replace. It's free to download a fully-functional trial copy (never expires, but reminds you about paying for it - single-user licence is only £16.50).

[pne.livejournal.com]

gvim (on, for example, Windows) does split screen and automatic matching brace highlighting (at least in the default install I used); but being a vi clone may take some getting used to if you haven't used vi before.

[rho]

I second this recommendation. I like EditPlus enough that I paid for it, even though it works perfectly fine without doing payment. It does do the split screen thing that you're after. Which I never knew it did, but I just poked at it to try and now I have a shiny new feature to use.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_hypatia_/]

Absolutely recommend emacs, not only are there versions for every platform it is one of the more functional editors under enablement software and it can run in Vi mode if you want to be able to switch.

If emacs really isn't for you and you want a more Windows based editor then Textpad isn't bad but Notepad++ probably has the edge for development work.

[mathcathy]

I'd say Emacs, too.

[draconid.livejournal.com]

*shudder*

[draconid.livejournal.com]

And to be a bit more constructive, I would repeat the votes for gvim - but it can be a pain in the butt when you're new to it! I barely know how to use half the functionality that it has, and I still think it's awesome.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Also, you forgot to add, you can configure Emacs to use Windows keystrokes (C-X, C-C, C-Z, C-V).

[mathcathy]

Can you configure windows to use emacs keystrokes, though?

[syllopsium.livejournal.com]

oh no not the editor arguments..
I always liked the X2 editor but its command line only and i cant remember if it does split screen.
Id probably also echo the notepad/textpad arguments
I would suggest that as well as bracket highlighting it also does flipping between brackets and expansion of css entities. I seem to remember that there were some very good free editors that did this but will have to poke google to recall.

[pplfichi.livejournal.com]

Notepad++ is my editor of choice in Windows and does all you list. I also use (g)Vim which can do this and runs under Windows, but it has more of a learning curve. Both are free.

[syllopsium.livejournal.com]

What, hooking the Wordstar-esque sequences? Not without difficulty..

There's also the CUA sequences which make a lot more sense than windows but are more OS/2-esque :

instead of Ctrl-C - Ctrl insert
instead of Ctrl-V - Shift insert
instead of Ctrl-X - Shift Delete
instead of Ctrl Z - ctrl backspace (if I remember correctly)

Some of these also work in Windows, but not in all apps, which is a pity.

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

No recommendations for text editors, but general applause and yayness for you and DW. :D

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

The alternative recommendation to Emacs, which is probably a bit overkill for livredor's purposes, is Eclipse, which you can configure to use Emacs keystrokes.

[mathcathy]

Oooh! I have Eclipse at work, but have very little idea about its functionality.

The keystrokes I miss most are CTRL-K, CTRL-Y, various of the navigational commands and the ability to put lines into the copy buffer just by highlighting them. I've lost count of the number of times I've highlighted a piece of text, scrolled to wherever I want to paste it and then realised my mistake.
If I figure out how to configure Eclipse to work like Emacs, will I get all of those functions too?

Emacs keybindings in Eclipse

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Windows -> Preferences -> General -> Keys is your friend.

You won't get all of Emacs key functionality, but you will get a lot, including not just cut, paste and copy, but also iterative search (C-s), and editor switching (C-x C-b) and loading (C-x C-f) functionality. I'm not sure about auto-highlighting; I suspect that may be a Windows vs X-Window thing rather than Emacs vs Eclipse.

Note: if you do switch to using Emacs keystrokes, you're going to find that if you use other people's machines, you'll be forever trying to cut text and closing the editor instead. As I've just done now here and had to retype the lot of this. :-S

(I need a computer geek icon, I think.)

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Though when using Linux I prefer kate.

Re: Emacs keybindings in Eclipse

[mathcathy]

I tried it!

Thank you. It will help so much.

No one else that I work with uses Eclipse, and since my default keystrokes when I'm coding tend to be Emacs ones, I've made all those mistakes several times. The worst one for me has been CTRL-X-S to save, which cut whatever text happened to be highlighted, then saved, thereby removing Microsoft's ability to Undo. (Of course, I've realised now that CTRL-X first meant that whatever text I'd removed was still in the buffer, but I didn't catch on to that straight away, and I didn't always notice that I'd used the wrong save command.)

You're right, that text highlighting to copy doesn't work this way in Eclipse, but it does work in Emacs running in Windows - my home computer has that set up.

[mathcathy]

I meant exactly what lethargic_man has suggested!

[nameandnature]

I use Vim too, though like everyone else, I'd say it's hard to learn because it's modal: there's a mode for commands and a mode for typing text. Here's a screenshot of it doing split screen and showing the matching bracket for the bracket under the cursor.

Are you guys going to have a consistent way of denoting a comment? I've been holding off on updating LJ New Comments until things settle down at DW. Currently it looks like DW marks up comments as elements with IDs that look like "tNNNN" or "ljcmtNNNN", like LJ does, so it'd just be a straight port to DW.