GeekNights 070122 - Text Editors

Rym

Tonight on GeekNights, we talk a bit about text editing. In the news, Wikipedia nofollows outgoing links, and Wordpress 2.1 is released.

Scott's Thing - Boeing Wing Stress Test
Rym's Thing - Sylvia Brown is a Fake (in case you couldn't tell)

Mamath

It was amusing to hear the reaction to the Wing Stress test. Seriously, that's how engineers test EVERYTHING. The materials and structures in your cars and heavy equipment went through similar tests. Nothing is all that exact. Then we slap a big fat safety factor on everything and declare it sound.

The more I learn about the engineering design process the more I worry about the machinery around me. I didn't use to be afraid of planes (been flying around all over the place since I was a little kid) but lately...they worry me a bit. Especially since I know the safety factor on planes is particularly low because of the properties of light metals.

HMTKSteve

How hard is it to customize the URLs for Wordpress? I would like to move to Wordpress but I need to be able to exactly match my existing URLs.

In regards to text editors... The best ones for programming are, as Scott stated, the ones that color-code and auto-indent your code. Never use notepad.exe for serious coding, it has a habit of throwing in some non-ASCII stuff that can screw up your php files!

Apreche

How hard is it to customize the URLs for Wordpress? I would like to move to Wordpress but I need to be able to exactly match my existing URLs.

Google answers this one as well. Answer here.

HMTKSteve

I tried using that and it ended up giving me 404 errors...

Apreche

I tried using that and it ended up giving me 404 errors...

You did it wrong.

HMTKSteve

Yes, I know I did it wrong! The point is, if I am fairly good at configuring things and I got it wrong, how hard is it to setup customized permalinks?

Apreche

Yes, I know I did it wrong! The point is, if I am fairly good at configuring things and I got it wrong, how hard is it to setup customized permalinks?

The customized permalinks are relatively easy. Writing a .htaccess to redirect with mod_rewrite is not something that can be done easily at all.

Victor Frost

I have recently discovered that my campus is allowing students to SSH into our server spaces. This is great because the cisco vpn client the school uses doesn't support 64bit OSs. While I would normally use the vpn to mount my serverspace as a drive in windows, I was happy to find that, when SSH-ing into it, you get a KSH shell. I was even more excited when I discovered that I could switch to a bash shell and thrilled to see that PICO, my text editor of choice, was present and ready for use.

I prefer PICO to Vi or Emacs because it most resembles DOS EDIT, which was the text editor I grew up with and am most familiar with.

Rym

I prefer PICO to Vi or Emacs because it most resembles DOS EDIT, which was the text editor I grew up with and am most familiar with.

But PICO can't do anything.

Apreche

And if you're going to use pico, at least use nano. It's the same thing, only better.

tektonick

JEDIT is also quite useful. It runs on many platforms, and there are a lot of plugins for all purposes. It can be a bit slow though, and you need Java for it.

Victor Frost

I prefer PICO to Vi or Emacs because it most resembles DOS EDIT, which was the text editor I grew up with and am most familiar with.

But PICO can't do anything.

It opens, saves, and lets me edit files. It does enough for me.

And if you're going to use pico, at least use nano. It's the same thing, only better.

I just downloaded to Win32 binary of nano.

How is it better? Oh, wait, I know how. Because it runs on WINDOWS. Sadly, it's not available on the server and I don't think I have permissions to run apps server-side.
Edit: Wow, the server is running BASH 2.05a. That shit's old.

Apreche

nano has features that you can't see.

For example, it supports syntax highlighting and auto-indentation.

Also, nano is actually open source, while pico is not.

Victor Frost

*shrug*Okay, but since nano doesn't recognise the syntax of HTML, Windows Batch Scripts, or Windows Power Shell, thats pretty useless to me. And I never indent anyway. Indentation is for final drafts.

As for it being open source, that's nice and all, but I'm not a programmer, so the fact that I CAN see the source doesn't mean anything to me. It's like telling me, "Oi, look at the blue prints for this here bicycle. This bicycle is awesome! The brake cables are made of high tensile strength steel, the brakes are made of a new rubber polymer compound, and the body is completely carbon fiber!" And I'll just be stand there and say, "That's nice and all, but as long as pedaling makes it go and squeezing the brakes makes it stop, then I just want to ride the damn bike."

And what's the point of having a feature in a text editor if the average user doesn't even know its there? And don't say it's in the help, because people will only go to the help if they really need help. Seeing how you can start typing as soon as it get started, that's not bloody likely. Neither Pico nor Nano are particularly well suited for programming, considering how much better Vi and Emacs are designed for the job.

Apreche

*shrug*Okay, but since nano doesn't recognise the syntax of HTML, Windows Batch Scripts, or Windows Power Shell, thats pretty useless to me. And I never indent anyway. Indentation is for final drafts.

It can highlight all those things, you just need to edit the configuration files.

Indentation is for code and configuration files. If you are writing essays in nano, something is very wrong.

The thing you don't seem to understand is that no normal user is going to use a command line text editor. They assume that the only reason someone would want to use a command line text editor is because they are a system's administrator editing configuration files and such.

You should actually be very glad that nano exists. It used to be that all *nix systems came with vi, not even vim. So if you wanted to work on that kind of machine, vi was the only text editor guaranteed to be there. Sure, you could install another one, but you would have to use vi to get your other editor installed. Because pine is not actually open source Linux distributions would not include it. Pico is a part of pine, so pico wouldn't get included either. Thus, nano was actually a huge boon because it makes it possible to administer Linux systems without knowing vi. The fact that nano is open source is helpful to you, even if you never look at the source code.

In summary, you have no clue what you are talking about. You're like a driver who says a Ferrari and a Hyundai are the same because they both have steering wheels, brakes, and gas pedals, and that's all you need.

Victor Frost

Look, Scott, I'm not a programmer or a sysadmin. Since I do more batch script writing than html, I'm not going to spend hours to figure out how to configure a program with the syntax of a "language" that isn't even consistent. I normally use DarkRoom, which is basically a back screen with green text. And I DO write essays in that because all I'm doing is writing; leave formatting for later. I'm not saying I can't appreciate the differences between Vi and Nano. What I'm saying is that for my uses there is little difference. For your uses Vi would probably be far more useful than nano. That doesn't mean you cant appreciate the uses of nano, just that it's not particularly useful to you.

Apreche

Look, Scott, I'm not a programmer or a sysadmin. Since I do more batch script writing than html, I'm not going to spend hours to figure out how to configure a program with the syntax of a "language" that isn't even consistent. I normally use DarkRoom, which is basically a back screen with green text. And I DO write essays in that because all I'm doing is writing; leave formatting for later. And I'm not saying I can't appreciate the differences. What I'm saying is thatfor my usesthere is little differences. For your uses Vi would probably be far more useful than nano. That doesn't mean you cant appreciate the uses of nano, just that it's not particularly useful to you.

I'm not saying nano isn't useful. I'm saying pico is a piece of shit, and there's a reason nano exists. And that nano is a lot better in ways that aren't discernible just from looking at the UI. Take, for example, the fact that nano supports the use of the mouse, but pico does not. Even if, as you say, you are using it to write essays and not format them, that's a really nice thing to have.

I'm trying to help you understand and appreciate the software features that you can not see. We're talking about the kinds of things that you would only notice if they were gone. Take for example UTF-8 support. If the text editor didn't have it, you would know when you opened a file and all the characters were messed up. If it has it, then you don't even realize there is a feature at work making magic for you. Being cognizant of these things going on in your software can vastly improve the experience for any computer user.

lackofcheese

Look, Scott, I'm not a programmer or a sysadmin. Since I do more batch script writing than html, I'm not going to spend hours to figure out how to configure a program with the syntax of a "language" that isn't even consistent.

That really shouldn't take hours, especially when other people already did the same thing a long time ago and put it on the Internet. Of course, you could always go from an editor that starts with these features natively - they would benefit you, wouldn't they? What reason is there not to take advantage of them?

I normally use DarkRoom, which is basically a back screen with green text. And I DO write essays in that because all I'm doing is writing; leave formatting for later.

Or never do manual formatting at all by using LaTeX, which also benefits from syntax highlighting.

Victor Frost

I normally use DarkRoom, which is basically a back screen with green text. And I DO write essays in that because all I'm doing is writing; leave formatting for later.

Or never do manual formatting at all by using LaTeX, which also benefits from syntax highlighting.

By formatting I mean stuff like bolding, italics, font size, etc...

I'm not saying nano isn't useful. I'm saying pico is a piece of shit, and there's a reason nano exists. And that nano is a lot better in ways that aren't discernible just from looking at the UI. Take, for example, the fact that nano supports the use of the mouse, but pico does not. Even if, as you say, you are using it to write essays and not format them, that's a really nice thing to have.

Yeah, those are great features to have. If all you're saying is that pico is shit, fine. You say it's shit, I believe you. I really don't care either way; It's not like my fingers wont type on a linux box if Pico isn't there. My whole thing was that (so far) pico has been on every linux system I've ever used and so far it's worked fine. The fact that it's on my school's servers and nano isn't just means I'll use Pico when I'm ssh-ed in.