From: Jake McArthur <jake.mcarthur@...>
Date: 2006-04-18T11:09:24+09:00
Subject: Re: Newbie's Ruby IDE Editor Roundup, April 2006

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I find most text editors out there to be abysmal. That said, here are  
my opinions on some of the more popular text editors (addressing  
Linux and also Mac since that platform has been disregarded so far  
and I know some might appreciate the info if they haven't yet tried  
the two Mac-specific editors I review).

Cross-Platform CLI:
	vim: Pretty nice, but you have to be willing to learn how to get  
around. Has a lot of navigation shortcuts, but there is a lack of  
language-sensitive shortcuts.
	emacs: I admit to not having used emacs very much, but it appears  
that there are tons of shortcuts that would be very helpful. I  
haven't personally seen enough experts zooming through the emacs  
interface for it to have gained much of my interest at all.

Linux GUI:
	gedit: Just a typical text editor. Nothing too special in my book.  
Lacks the ability to automagically update if the file is altered by  
some external process. Not sure about Ruby highlighting; I've mostly  
used this for other languages.
	kwrite: Also typical, but has one up over gedit in my book in that  
it will update to the latest version of the file written to disk if  
it is changed. Very beneficial since I use version management. Like  
gedit, I don't recall programming in Ruby in kwrite.
	
Mac GUI:
	SubEthaEdit: Has most features anybody cares about for a lightweight  
text editor. Great syntax highlighting, fast code completion built in  
using Cocoa's excellent autocompletion feature, doesn't get in the  
way, automatic update to latest version of file. Also, it has a  
wonderful peer collaboration feature allowing many people to work on  
the same file locally or remotely at the same time with real-time  
updates. This is probably nicest for pairs of developers working  
together, but larger groups probably would find collaboration in this  
way inefficient.
	TextMate: My personal favorite. Way too many features to list here.  
Great macros and snippets (all easily programmable), support for tons  
of languages (even languages embedded into other languages like the  
Ruby inside an rhtml file), and even some excellent project  
management and version control system support. The sheer number of  
features feels a bit more medium-weight than I am used to in other  
editors, but it performs pretty nicely overall.

Obviously, I recommend that anybody who has a Mac check out TextMate  
and SubEthaEdit; at least one of the two is sure to satisfy, as they  
tackle two extremely different ends of the spectrum.

- Jake McArthur

On Apr 16, 2006, at 8:59 PM, Javaman49 wrote:

> By a Newbie, for Newbies.
> [...]

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