On Thu, Oct 18, 2007 at 09:05:48AM +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
I'm a bit surprised my quests for a good GUI text editor and XML viewer have struggled under Linux so far, one area I thought I'd be spoilt for choice! Maybe that's the problem, too much choice, too little focus. Or do "real programmers" still use text-mode editors?
To some extent - yes.
For anyone who uses a wide variety of languages and file formats it's easier to use a very familiar editor (i.e. use the same one for everything) and live with the resulting 'rough edges', than it is to use an unfamiliar editor dedicated to the one use. Well, that's what I find anyway.
I use vile/xvile which is a vi clone with Emacs aspirations. It has a very complete set of syntax colour highlighting filters which recognise just about every language and format I have thrown at it. This gives at least some help in things like XML and HTML and my fingers can work the same way that they do when writing C or Python or when composing E-Mails and writing news postings (since I use text based programs for those too, for much the same reason, a familiar editor).
A further advantage (for me) of using a vi clone is that when I connect to one of our target systems at work to look at error logs or whatever I can use 'real' vi without too much pain. They are Solaris systems so vi is all that you've got 'out of the box' at least on the command line.