- This topic has 43 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated Jan 21-9:06 pm by Brian Masinick.
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Brian Masinick
One more comment on my editor diversion: all of the editors, whether line editors, full screen editors, or graphical editors, basic or full featured, were all capable, fast and responsive on siduction. I’m back now on antiX. My friends, siduction is a nice distribution for those who like to run Sid-based software, but antiX, even with my newest system, can still show off its speed along with light footprint. I thought stuff was fast on siduction; the commands came up IMMEDIATELY on antiX barely after I completed the command and pressed Enter. That won’t surprise anyone who has been around here for any length of time.
Our stuff is very lean and efficient; that also translates to FAST!
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Brian MasinickBrian Masinick
Hi, @PPC do you think it reasonable to edit the name of the topic to “List of light GUI text editors”?
I got the impression this is the (core of this) topic discussed and a proposal/recommendation from this class of editors is intended as an output.If I am mistaken, my first choice would be ‘vim’ (mentioned also by @Brian Masinick) which is pretty hard to get accustomed to for a novice.
Vim is a great choice, but initial “ease of use” is not it’s greatest attribute. There is a vim variation called “Cream” that is a bit easier to digest for beginners.
Perhaps that would be something worthwhile for a person who is willing to try something different.--
Brian Masinick
oops
… From MX repos, package xfe.
If I am not mistaken XFE does not have print capability. At least not working in my instance…
Mem use very small though.I mostly use xfe files explorer instead xfwrite (into the same package) it was just for fun (I usually use featherpad).
xfwrite need apparently a custom printer/config: lpr -P printer … but for the printing (or for pdf, LibreOffice is better) it is mosly a simple editor of text.BobC
I see “GUI” a non-important criteria. Same with printing ability. Most of my systems have no printer.
What is important to me are:
Copy/paste using the same keystrokes as the browser and other programs I use.
Edit multiple files at a time.
Split the screen so that I can copy/paste between the files.
Indent/un-indent code.
Goto a line option on command line (so I can open the file on a particular line number)
Search/replace capability.
Automatically create backup copies of changed files.
Undo/redo
GUI might make it a bit prettier, but the above are what make an editor useful to me.
Simple keyboard macros can help, too. Powerful macros and Keyboard reassignment are the dream.
I wish I had Brief with all its standard macros and the macros I wrote in the 80’s and 90’s. Grief exists, which is supposed to be a clone, but I can’t get it to compile/work. I do have Brief with my macros able to run in a DOS window, but it’s just not convenient to use in a Linux environment. I would also need some new macros for shell, and Bash, maybe Python, too. It already has C and C++.
Brian Masinick
We didn’t mention another simple editing tool: nano. It’s a very basic editor, but it can do more than it appears and it is simple and fast.
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Brian MasinickBrian Masinick
Brian Masinick
This guide also explains how to modify the behavior of the nano editor:
https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-use-nano-text-editor/--
Brian MasinickYes, nano is Ok, especially from the standpoint that there are old instructions out there on the web that will tell someone to perform a task, and their instructions many times have them use nano. It uses old Wordstar keys (I bought Wordstar for CP/M in 1980 or so and I remember many of the keys)
mcedit is far better, IMO, but its mark and copy setup is unusual. Its already installed as part of Midnight Commander.
Brian Masinick
Ah yes, mcedit is an editor often forgotten because it’s integrated in Midnight Commander and it’s a useful editor.
Being a longtime geek, messing around with editors, browsers and shells is something I have done for decades. I don’t cover nearly as many tools now as I have in the past but there are literally hundreds of alternatives available!
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Brian MasinickBrian Masinick
Vim, vi, and any editors based on them have a reputation for being difficult to use. I would counter that they are different and therefore it takes time to get familiar. It’s not that difficult though.
Way back in 1982 I went to an AT&T education and training center to take a class in C programming. We used a UNIX system in the class. It REALLY WAS a UNIX system, an AT&T brand of server running vanilla UNIX. The standard editor was ed.
I may have run across vi later or it may have been a different course through NCR and their implementation of UNIX on their tower sized lab systems. Needless to say ed and vi were about all I had access to.
Just prior to that time I had access to an early version of Emacs called Gosling Emacs (before GNU Emacs was available). These were powerful tools but it was like learning a programming language even as I was taking courses in operating systems and programming languages.
I’m thankful for that early education. These days hardly anyone offers training or education except for expensive university classes.
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Brian Masinick
iznit
PPC, some additional items for your broad survey are debian packages “nedit” and “bluefish” and “kephra”.
I do favor your suggestion to use mousepad instead of leafpad. Regardless the “memory”, I would say the additional features are “well worth it”. One detail probably not considered, at least not yet mentioned here — mousepad provides “tabs”. What is the memory overhead (((I did not compare))) of a single instance of mousepad with 3 tabs, vs same 3 documents opened into 3 standalone instances of leafpad?
Sorry, I can’t get behind the notion that “for me, a secondary Text Editor ideally should have autosave feature- saving each character as I type”. That would be crazy expensive in terms of disk writes. When editing a large file ((( example, HOSTS file with gobs of adblock entries ))) every keystroke would trigger 600KB+ writeback! I do favor a variable periodic autosave, but probably would not save more often than every 2(?) minutes or so. Also I sometimes value incremental saves where the editor applies a timestamp string to the filenames, eventually cleanup the old revisions but in the meantime might want to “diff” the various drafts.
Brian Masinick
Any editors that track keystrokes don’t write out characters one by one; typically the characters are stored in “cache” and periodically written in an efficient format. They are pretty effective for any unexpected failures, and those are quite rare these days anyway so it’s nothing to worry about.
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Brian MasinickI suppose autosave every X minutes might be nice, and I do use that feature, but I don’t expect that from a light editor. If it would rename/move the original file and replace it with the new one, that will be good enough for me.
I did a test, and Tilde needed to download 1.45mb including all dependencies to install on top of 22 base, so it is more than the 145k to install.
Brian Masinick
Most tracking features are configurable. You should be able to disable them or greatly decrease the snapshot interval.
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Brian Masinickne – Nice editor looks pretty good for a very small editor. It doesn’t have any split screen or automatic backup, though. I did find that if I had 2 terminals open I could use the terminal’s copy paste to work between the two. It was a 245k download, and didn’t need any additional dependencies. When running, a terminal session was needed + 1.5 mb, so that’s about 17 mb total.
PS:
I tested ne by editing all of the IceWM settings files, like the Control Center does, and it does open them all, and was almost instantaneous coming up, but it doesn’t have tabs, so you need to know to press F4 for a documents list, or press Esc Esc then go to the Documents menu, and go to Select. Its not difficult, but not coming up with any instructions or menu might cause angst for a newbie. I suppose xdotool could be used to force the menu at initialization. ne used 18mb to edit all those files at once.BTW: Not installing Geany by default would save 3.8mb on the CD. Not installing Leafpad saves less than 100k.
- This reply was modified 5 months ago by BobC.
- This reply was modified 5 months ago by BobC.
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