04-24-2023, 04:22 PM
A spellchecker in a code editor? Just why?
This isn't aimed at bplus or anybody else in particular, but I babble (as usual) from experience:
It's not going to help you get variable names spelled correctly unless you slave over which "words" are good and which have to be rejected. Run the code editor on a powerful computer, not on 32-bit single-core CPU where the poor performance will be noticed easily. Sadly, we will have to accept even more of these programs (including Linux desktop environments) that could potentially save gigabytes of data only for search results.
A code editor isn't worth using if it doesn't have a program preferences dialog in a GUI. Not modifying XML or JSON. Notepad++ failed very hard right here, doing a half-ass job with a dialog which has only half the settings and otherwise have to go hunting with five or six XML files it might or might not modify. Cannot modify one of those files while Notepad++ is running!
Don't come near the "clone" on Linux known as "Notepadqq". That is an even bigger joke about program preferences -- it doesn't have any!
Sometimes I use Geany, and more often I settle for the slow GEdit/Pluma/Xed, or Kate on KDE only to edit QB64 source code. Yes I could do better than that but I can't be arsed with memory hogs with toolbars all over the place, syntax coloring which zaps my eyes, and with the never-ending possibilities of editing a template command line that sometimes doesn't work.
I don't like any editor based on Scintilla because whoever packaged it has it doing screwy things. Like the Purebasic editor, and this freeware editor written by a Russian. The latter was pretty good but liked messing around with file associations. It ignored the program preferences which were barely sufficient for it. Generally it was inferior to Notepad++ doing anything with it which wasn't source code. The Purebasic editor around v5.21 LTS was buggy, kept a database for undo or sessions or whatever, then suddenly it crashed and I lost my work too often so I became disaffected by that whole programming system.
In the past with Freebasic I used FBEdit which was a darned good effort but counterintuitive in places. I was never able to compile and run successfully any program through it. It was a royal pain on WindowsXP having to give it the "-s" flag for Freebasic to create a GUI program and it was easy to mess it up if the programmer had any "PRINT" statements which were meant instead for a console program. Sadly it was endless adjusting of the command-line template to compile. I have never attempted it with a multi-file project. The FBEdit had other bugs never fixed, including an ugly one with undo.
Which reminds me: with Geany make sure you go into the preferences and disable [CTRL][R] shortcut. Because it would take you by surprise in a really nasty way! In the very first time that is pressed, after it's installed, it wipes out your current file. Then it does like GEdit putting a lame-ass quasi-dialog box warning you that you have to go back to the preferences to make sure you didn't choose the undo history being disregarded while trying to reload a file from disk, to save memory. This is the first time such an abominable thing ever happened to me! I could lose all my work with one keypress! This Geany is pretty good otherwise except this thing I have just explained.
Make sure with any text editor used to edit source code, you save your work regularly. Do not depend on any auto-save feature. The one for Kate/KWrite is somewhat buggy and really sucks using it toward a slow internal hard disk or an even slower USB v2.0 pluggable disk. Enable the back-up feature for GEdit and work-alikes if you have to.
This isn't aimed at bplus or anybody else in particular, but I babble (as usual) from experience:
It's not going to help you get variable names spelled correctly unless you slave over which "words" are good and which have to be rejected. Run the code editor on a powerful computer, not on 32-bit single-core CPU where the poor performance will be noticed easily. Sadly, we will have to accept even more of these programs (including Linux desktop environments) that could potentially save gigabytes of data only for search results.
A code editor isn't worth using if it doesn't have a program preferences dialog in a GUI. Not modifying XML or JSON. Notepad++ failed very hard right here, doing a half-ass job with a dialog which has only half the settings and otherwise have to go hunting with five or six XML files it might or might not modify. Cannot modify one of those files while Notepad++ is running!
Don't come near the "clone" on Linux known as "Notepadqq". That is an even bigger joke about program preferences -- it doesn't have any!
Sometimes I use Geany, and more often I settle for the slow GEdit/Pluma/Xed, or Kate on KDE only to edit QB64 source code. Yes I could do better than that but I can't be arsed with memory hogs with toolbars all over the place, syntax coloring which zaps my eyes, and with the never-ending possibilities of editing a template command line that sometimes doesn't work.
I don't like any editor based on Scintilla because whoever packaged it has it doing screwy things. Like the Purebasic editor, and this freeware editor written by a Russian. The latter was pretty good but liked messing around with file associations. It ignored the program preferences which were barely sufficient for it. Generally it was inferior to Notepad++ doing anything with it which wasn't source code. The Purebasic editor around v5.21 LTS was buggy, kept a database for undo or sessions or whatever, then suddenly it crashed and I lost my work too often so I became disaffected by that whole programming system.
In the past with Freebasic I used FBEdit which was a darned good effort but counterintuitive in places. I was never able to compile and run successfully any program through it. It was a royal pain on WindowsXP having to give it the "-s" flag for Freebasic to create a GUI program and it was easy to mess it up if the programmer had any "PRINT" statements which were meant instead for a console program. Sadly it was endless adjusting of the command-line template to compile. I have never attempted it with a multi-file project. The FBEdit had other bugs never fixed, including an ugly one with undo.
Which reminds me: with Geany make sure you go into the preferences and disable [CTRL][R] shortcut. Because it would take you by surprise in a really nasty way! In the very first time that is pressed, after it's installed, it wipes out your current file. Then it does like GEdit putting a lame-ass quasi-dialog box warning you that you have to go back to the preferences to make sure you didn't choose the undo history being disregarded while trying to reload a file from disk, to save memory. This is the first time such an abominable thing ever happened to me! I could lose all my work with one keypress! This Geany is pretty good otherwise except this thing I have just explained.
Make sure with any text editor used to edit source code, you save your work regularly. Do not depend on any auto-save feature. The one for Kate/KWrite is somewhat buggy and really sucks using it toward a slow internal hard disk or an even slower USB v2.0 pluggable disk. Enable the back-up feature for GEdit and work-alikes if you have to.