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Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

foicica.com

51–60 of 83 posts

Re: Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

#51
Sadly, on the Mac, this doesn't feel like a native application and things like changing the size of the window are broken. Also, a horizontal scrollbar appearing in an empty text window is strange. Might work great on Linux and I like the idea but the execution on Mac leaves a lot to be desired.

Re: Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Whoever suggested this thing is a good fit for OS X should be harpooned by the ghost of Steve Jobs.

I do use this on OS X and agree that it does not look quite 'native'. It might be possible to port Textadept to be fully native. Scite, which uses the same Scintilla engine, is available as a native OS X app. It might also be possible to tweak the GTK layouts for the OS X version.

I don't think sticking with GTK for the OS X version is a wise idea. It really just needs to go Cocoa or not bother, since right now it's downright unpleasant to use for me. Scrolling through text using a trackpad, for example, feels completely unnatural next to the rest of the OS X UI (horizontal scrolling appears to barely work at all - vertical scrolling isn't too bad but there is something very off about it). I think the decision to go with GTK for the OS X version was just a poor choice and probably not one made by anyone who uses OS X often.

In the meantime, I guess I'll go look at the source and see what kind of changes would need to be made to use Cocoa in place of GTK on OS X.

Re: Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

#54
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that this has a small core of C and Lua, according to the website, is a much better selling point than "unparalleled extensibility". I don't think even most Vim fans would claim vim is "as extensible" as Emacs -- while maybe on paper -- not really. I prefer Vim, but it's hard to argue with the sentiment that "Emacs is a nice operating system". Still with proper support for Lua, I suspect it might be forced t…

Textadept uses Lua as scripting language. Sublime Text uses Python as scripting language. Any hipster working on a text editor that uses Javascript as scripting language?

Chocolat is an editor for the mac - very similar looks-wise to TextMate - that uses javascript for it's scripting api, though I've never used it.

http://chocolatapp.com/

http://chocolatapp.com/blog/?chocolat-node

Re: Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

#55
Has anyone tried this out in terminal (ncurses version). I get an error on osx, so i can't load a file. I get this if I give a file on command line.

> ....0.osx/Textadept.app/Contents/Resources/core/file_io.lua:143: bad argument #1 to 'iconv' (string expected, got nil)

Open file (M-S-O) does nothing.

Tried C-u (snapopen) and get a similar iconv error:

> pt.app/Contents/Resources/modules/textadept/snapopen.lua:67: bad argument #1 to 'iconv' (string expected,

I am executing the textadept-ncurses.osx file. Thx. Please note that is acting like a TAB but C-h is working correctly.

Re: Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

#56
post #53

OK, so I find Sublime Text 2 extremely perfect for my needs... now how does this thing beat pure perfection? ;)

I had a similar question, and looked through the docs...

Textadept does not appear to have multiple select features on par with SublimeText. But then again who does?

Re: Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

#57

Does the "toggle block comment" option actually work (Ctrl+/)? Tried it with python (file saved with .py ext and syntax highlighting even showed up), but couldn't comment with that keybinding... edit: block commenting didn't even work when selecting it from the Edit menu.

By default comment strings are not defined in core Textadept. Add them like this: http://foicica.com/wiki/comment-supplemental Or install the Python language module: http://foicica.com/hg/python/

Awesome, thanks. I just added that comment string def to init.lua and it works great.

Edit: why is this not there by default? I'm not sure any developer would not want a block commenting function...

Re: Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

#58

Have you seen the scroll bars on this thing? Or the Icon? No way I'm using this on OSX...

Imagine your friends see this app running on your computer, i mean gooosh.... whatevahhh they wouldn't invite you to their minimalism exquisite design parties anymore.

I know you Linux guys are used to every app having a completely different look and feel, but on the mac this app just doesn't feel native.

But your story was cool too...

Re: Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

#59

> Unparalleled extensibility. A bold claim to make when your competition includes Vim and Emacs. Is there some kind of feature comparison somewhere? Or any particular highlights? The feature list is a nice start, but basically what I would expect of any decent editor anyway (except for code completion).

Don't forget about Notepad++ (Windows only though) and Sublime Text (best text rendering I've seen yet), which I'd argue are also valid comparisons - yes, even to Vim/Emacs. That being said, I did have a quick look through the Textadept manual, and there are quite indeed a few useful and unique features... Whether or not this indicates "unparalled" extensibility though, is another matter all together.

IMO you can't compare an editor to Vim/Emacs if it can't run in a console.

Re: Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

#60
post #44

About that extensibility, would it be possible to implement inline diffs? (Paint margin green for added lines, show a red marker for deleted lines.)

The (deprecated) debug module has some screen shots that show margin markers: http://foicica.com/wiki/lua-debugger The styling and symbol choice is configurable. Not sure how inline diff works though (for deleted lines), do you have an example in another editor?

Here is how Netbeans does it: http://netbeans.org/projects/versioncontrol/pages/Git_ui#Inl...
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