Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!news.quux.org!eternal-september.org!feeder2.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: =?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=C3=B8j?= Newsgroups: comp.os.vms Subject: Re: VMS editor uncommon option Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2024 16:03:29 -0500 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 78 Message-ID: References: <67239aeb$0$719$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <6723bbf4$0$719$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <67281f7e$0$719$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2024 22:03:26 +0100 (CET) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="d39b7eec24b23ddccfdd2061dcb1ac5f"; logging-data="1171151"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18i27i37p5E8OfihXpGrOVhk+Qs5Ee8Uww=" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird Cancel-Lock: sha1:eRAIHBBzWaaEIwtEPoX2jA7GQRs= In-Reply-To: Content-Language: en-US Bytes: 4466 On 11/4/2024 6:19 AM, Marc Van Dyck wrote: > Arne Vajhøj was thinking very hard : >> So I did a first attempt on DCL, VMS Pascal and VMS Basic >> support. >> >> https://www.vajhoej.dk/arne/vmsstuff/jedit/ >> >> has some instructions in content.txt and a >> jedit-bundle.zip with everything. >> >> Not everybody likes JEdit, but modern GUI editors >> for VMS is not exactly a crowded space. :-) > > A naïve question : I have never been exposed, I must admit, to "modern > GUI editors". What more do they have to offer compared to, for example, > good old DECWindows LSE (with EDT keypad of course) ? Could you try to > convince me ? I don't know if I can convince you that JEdit is great. Maybe I can convince you that it is worth trying out. First a caveat. I don’t have much experience with LSE. I have seen both the VT interface and the DECWindows interface. But I never liked LSE. I was always an EVE person on VMS. My clear impression is that LSE was a good product in its time, but it has not evolved for 30+ years. Next the editor vs IDE discussion. I see it more as scale than as two buckets. So if I were to put various editors/IDE's on the scale it would be: editor <------------------------------------> IDE EDT EVE JEdit LSE VSCode Eclipse Nice features in JEdit: * Support multiple horizontal and vertical split of screen. * Syntax coloring for a ton of languages - both old and new. * The BufferTabs plugin (as opposed to the builtin buffer switcher) is pretty nice for working with lots of open files. * The JDiff plugin makes it easy to see difference in two files side by side with color highlighting. * Can read and write files in all sorts of encodings. * Can convert tab characters to spaces. * Bracket matching. * Smart indent. * The XML plugin does nice auto complete for XML and HTML * There is a FTP/SFTP plugin to allow access to remote files. I have never liked that though - I always prefer to edit locally and then FTP/SFTP. * Anyone that has used a recent editor/IDE/wordprocessor on PC can use JEdit. It comes with documentation, but there is really no reason to read it. Menus, icons, right click context menu are mostly as expected. I probably only use 20% of the functionality - lots left to investigate, but if I need something I find it in the menus. * Same UI on Windows, Linux, VMS, macOS, FreeBSD etc. (on Windows and various *nix there are lots of editors to pick from, but on VMS the offerings are more limited) There may not be many "must have" features, but I think there are a lot of "nice to have" features. Not so nice things with JEdit: * Slow startup time – so keep it open and close and open files from within. * Rather ugly font. * Default RFM is STMLF not VAR. But besides all the objective pros and cons then editor choice also has a significant subjective aspect – some may love it – some may hate it. If you are in the market for a graphical editor on VMS, then it seems obvious to give JEdit a try and see if you like it or not. Worst case is that you don’t like it and you have wasted an hour or two of your time. Arne