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Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

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Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#131

Post by ugh »

jrockway wrote: post #127
ugh wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Still, the author calling HN posters Neanderthals was a nice touch.” In this case quite appropriate, though. Having to scroll down one third of the page before you get to anything resembling a meaningful discussion about the actual content of the article cannot possibly be a good thing. Neither can the sneer and arrogance displayed in this thread. (I’m kind of aware of the irony of me participating in this thread. R…

The "sneer and arrogance" displayed in the thread is from people who actually already implemented most of these features, and from people using those extensions. This article boils down to "It isn't pretty enough, and I didn't write it." In other words: no actual relevant content. Just a lot of pretty images as text, BIG FONTS, and whining.

Sigh.

“Orange?! U R DUMB!!!!1!” – that’s what I don’t like. Not disagreement with the actual content of the article.

Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#132

Post by silentbicycle »

Flow wrote: post #122
jff wrote: post #49

I use Acme, it's got a smashing way to browse, open, and manage files.

Is there a port of Acme to OS X? Or are there any similar editors?

Wily (http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~oz/wily/) is a major Unix port. Some quick googling says that it should work on OS X, though you need a three-button mouse for its chording-based interface. Its design is strongly influenced inspired by Oberon (http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/) (the OS, not the beer).

I find its design very novel, but the mouse-centric UI is a dealbreaker for me. (I went back to Emacs.) If you're already using a Mac, you're probably a bit more forgiving of mice, though.

Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#133

Post by silentbicycle »

jrockway wrote: post #128
tree_of_item wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to post some Emacs packages that provide what he's asking for. Your first post just dismissed him as a "typical designer" and focused only on the word ugly.

Everything he wants is handled by eproject and a tags table. (If you don't want to generate a tags table, just have something generate it for you in the background. I use the Perl-specific http://github.com/jrockway/editor-tags/. ) Anything, icicles, ido, ibuffer, and iswitchb, are also good tools.

Anything, in particular, seems to cover most of his wishes.

He dismisses the menu style that ibuffer / iswitchb use as ugly, and while I agree that their output is cluttered, I still find them vastly superior in practice to a one-file-per-line list. They make more sense with an editor that uses a minibuffer, though. (I use dmenu, too.)

Also, I think displaying the file extensions in lowercase would make them easier to visually disambiguate at a glance. Block of CAPITAL LETTERS hide ascenders and descenders, making every word a rectangle.

Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#134

Post by silentbicycle »

fexl wrote: post #104

Vim has this nice feature where you can edit directories as well as files. Just say: vi dir Now you're looking at a directory listing, and you can move down to an entry and press Enter to go there. When you're inside a file, you can go back up with: :e .. You can also use wildcards and tab completion. I suppose for finding routines you can use ctags, though I haven't bothered with that in quite a while.

That didn't work for me with nvi or vim, it just says, "/usr is a directory". Does it require an extension? (I'm assuming your 'vi' is a symlink to 'vim', which is not always the case.)

Similarly, Emacs has dired, and in some extensions you can edit the file metadata in place and hit save to rename files, chmod, etc.

Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#135

Post by Flow »

silentbicycle wrote: post #132
Flow wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a port of Acme to OS X? Or are there any similar editors?

Wily ( http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~oz/wily/ ) is a major Unix port. Some quick googling says that it should work on OS X, though you need a three-button mouse for its chording-based interface. Its design is strongly influenced inspired by Oberon ( http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ ) (the OS, not the beer). I find its design very novel, but the mouse-centric UI is a dealbreaker for me. (I went back to Emac…

That's what people think. But Mac OS X is actually short-cut land. There are loads of short-cuts.

Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#136

Post by jff »

Flow wrote: post #122
jff wrote: post #49

I use Acme, it's got a smashing way to browse, open, and manage files.

Is there a port of Acme to OS X? Or are there any similar editors?

Ignore the reference to Wily in the other post; that is an ancient and crappy copy.

Plan9Port http://swtch.com/plan9port/ has Acme, along with many other useful Plan 9 tools.

Acme-SAC http://www.caerwyn.com/acme/ is a standalone bundle of the Inferno version of Acme.

Both will run on OS X, both are basically the same. I use Plan9Port.

Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#137

Post by daten »

MaysonL wrote: post #22
btipling wrote: post #3

Am I the only one that found staring at orange hard on the eyes? I guess I should give the author credit for all the work that they put into this rant, seems like a blog post could have done just the same without all the fancy graphics and what not.

If you happen to be on a mac, control-option-command-8 is your friend. Also, the readability bookmarklet does wonders for the appearance of sites like these. (And thanks to the people on HN who originally introduced me to these)

Control-Option-Command-8 switches the display to greyscale, then inverts it (in other words, black text on white becomes white text on black).

Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#138

Post by fexl »

silentbicycle wrote: post #134
fexl wrote: post #104

Vim has this nice feature where you can edit directories as well as files. Just say: vi dir Now you're looking at a directory listing, and you can move down to an entry and press Enter to go there. When you're inside a file, you can go back up with: :e .. You can also use wildcards and tab completion. I suppose for finding routines you can use ctags, though I haven't bothered with that in quite a while.

That didn't work for me with nvi or vim, it just says, "/usr is a directory". Does it require an extension? (I'm assuming your 'vi' is a symlink to 'vim', which is not always the case.) Similarly, Emacs has dired, and in some extensions you can edit the file metadata in place and hit save to rename files, chmod, etc.

Right, I'm talking about vim. On Ubuntu, by default, my "vi" is vim.

I'm surprised it didn't work for you using vim explicitly. It works for me using versions 7.1.138 and 7.2.245, from fresh installs, by default, with no fancy configuration or add-ons.

When I run vim on /usr, it shows me a directory listing which I can browse and edit. I can create, delete, and rename directories and files right there.

Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#139

Post by silentbicycle »

Flow wrote: post #135
silentbicycle wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wily ( http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~oz/wily/ ) is a major Unix port. Some quick googling says that it should work on OS X, though you need a three-button mouse for its chording-based interface. Its design is strongly influenced inspired by Oberon ( http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ ) (the OS, not the beer). I find its design very novel, but the mouse-centric UI is a dealbreaker for me. (I went back to Emac…

That's what people think. But Mac OS X is actually short-cut land. There are loads of short-cuts.

Can you use OS X entirely without a mouse?
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