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Re: Atom

#481
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason why "editing plain text" should be anything other than immediately intuitive. Advanced, time-saving features, like multi-cursors or regexp-based find-and-replace, can and should be progressively revealed through normal use of the software. This ludditic reverence for user-hostile text editors is one of the more perplexing and frustrating things about our industry.

> There is no reason why "editing plain text" should be anything other than immediately intuitive. Are you suggesting that it isn't in Emacs? Well, I remember using Emacs for the first time. It opened up and I started editing the opened file. I saved the file from the file menu (which also showed me the shortcut for saving the file the next time I have to save something). Done. Now, this is exactly what a novice woul…

    > Are you suggesting that it isn't in Emacs?
Yes, of course. Emacs is obviously and inarguably not immediately intuitive.

Re: Atom

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes I get so confused that I erase entire files OT, but just this week my wife did something that really got me thinking about how far computers haven't come in terms of usability. I heard her say "O crap" from behind her macbook, and out of habit I came to assist. For some reason unknown to both of us, she had pasted the text of an email into a document called "thesis.docx", and then saved it. The text was c…

"Microsoft word on a macbook, and your penultimate version of a file is not backed up." Your comments makes me think that neither you nor your wife knew about tracking changes in office documents: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/track-changes-wh... But then considering that the unfortunate loss of data happened after an already lengthy sequence of manual actions, I wouldn't be surprised if the "o crap" wo…

Although really software should be idiot friendly and default to not letting you delete stuff by accident. As an aside I've managed to delete my code more than once in a similar manner in PyScripter which makes me feel rather silly but is quite easily done.

Re: Atom

#483

First let me say that I've used only vim and emacs for the last 5+ years that I have been a daily coder. I'm extremely comfortable with vim. I can cruise seemingly at light speed and have just never been able to find a text editor which offered the same level of productivity when jumping back and forth between the mouse/trackpad and keyboard. However I just couldn't resist the urge to try out a new text editor that w…

Textmate can, pretty sure any editor that uses webkit to display a markdown preview can do this.

Re: Atom

#486
post #341

From "The Zen of Programming": ------ Hearing a disturbance, the master programmer went into the novice's cubicle. "Curse these personal computers!" cried the novice in anger, "To make them do anything I must use three or even four editing programs. Sometimes I get so confused that I erase entire files. This is truly intolerable!" The master programmer stared at the novice. "And what would you do to remedy this state…

> Sometimes I get so confused that I erase entire files OT, but just this week my wife did something that really got me thinking about how far computers haven't come in terms of usability. I heard her say "O crap" from behind her macbook, and out of habit I came to assist. For some reason unknown to both of us, she had pasted the text of an email into a document called "thesis.docx", and then saved it. The text was c…

> not backed up.

> And she is no fool

She sure sounds like one

Re: Atom

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and there's no compilation step or anything -- then it's almost a fundamental paradigm shift for what desktop software could be. > It already makes me dream of a word processor I could hack like that, or a music player. Just by opening up a text editor. It's an inspiring thought. Not to rain on your parade or anything, but you can already do this with Emacs, not to mention that Emacs is free, open source software.…

True, but it's a question of accessibility. Far more people can program in JavaScript than Lisp, and far more people use GUI desktop software that follows traditional GUI user-interface paradigms, than do things inside their terminal. (Edit: or terminal-style buffers/frames.) So that's why my statement was limited to what " desktop software" could be. :) I mean, I use LibreOffice, which is FOSS, but I am never going…

Just because people can program in Javascript doesn't mean they will be able to easily modify the code. Complicated code is complicated in any language, and Javascript in particular allows to write completely incomprehensible code that even pros would have trouble with. In addition, you'd still have to learn all the necessary APIs which might be harder than learning a new language.

Re: Atom

#489
post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs is GUI desktop software. Few people use it in a terminal. Also, people didn't born knowing Javascript. They learnt it. And one could argue that Lisp is just as easy to learn, if not easier.

> people didn't born knowing Javascript. They learnt it. And one could argue that Lisp is just as easy to learn Just about everyone here knows javascript. Almost know one here knows Lisp, make your own conclusions.

You do realize this site was written in Lisp?

Re: Atom

#490
post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy. Right there in the File menu near the Save command is Revert To , which leads to a submenu with Previous Save and Browse All Versions... options. The latter uses the slick Time Machine UI ( http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4753 ). Except, per my other comment, Microsoft doesn't bother writing Mac software that works like Mac software. It's kind of like running Java desktop software (actually worse)... neither…

As you say "Microsoft doesn't bother writing" and his girlfriend uses MS Word on OS X if I understood. Can she then use that feature to recover her work after she had done the "Save" from the MS Word or not?

No, she's probably not going to be able to recover her lost work. What OP and others are trying to point out is that OS X has support for saving revisions to documents if application developers (like Microsoft) would just take advantage of it.
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