Re: SEUL: Text editors.

[Donovan Rebbechi <elflord@pegasus.rutgers.edu>]

Hi. THis is a comprehensive assesment of what I have looked at to date
regarding different editors. So far, the best choices for console editors
appear to be pico and ee. I favour pico, but urge you all to see both of
them.

In the way of GUI editors, so far, the best ones are the two motif based
ones I looked at )-: which we can't include in the base. The other two,
XEnon and  are MEdit are
almost OK, but the menus need to be more thourough (the functionality is
already there though) and they need some kind of online help (even a help
button which pops up a brief summary of keybindings).

We need some-one to check out TkDesk editor (I don't have the right
version of Tcl-Tk. Anyone got TkDesk ? ) and SeX (Debian users... it's on 
the debian page under stable main.)

here's a brief summary of what I investigated :

-- Donovan


CONSOLE STUFF: Top choices 

Pico 

User friendly console editor that's part of pine. Not any good for large docs, but for small files the user friendliness pays off.


ee :

not bad. I like the way it writes the key bindings on top of screen, much
like pico. Can't work out how to highlight text with it. (in pico you can
mark text) otherwise quite nice. 

CONSOLE STUFF: NOT AS GOOD
____________________________

JE

ALso has a "menu". Not as nice (friendly)  as pico or ee though.

Jered

Improved version of JE. Still Not as friendly as pico or ee. (IMO) Still no
online help. also, appeared a little broken.

fpted

Had online help. But looks very broken . I couldn't get out of the darn thing and had to kill it from another console.

Ted 

Ughhh. Ugly like you wouldn't believe.

____________________________________________________________________


GOOD FREE X-WINDOWS EDITORS :

xenon

not bad. Standard keybindings. (A-X = cut etc.) 
The menus could be a little nicer though. 
No online help or configurability. 
ALso lacks word-wrap.
Has autoindent feature.


MEdit 	

Not bad. Very simple. 
Decent edit menu and more config options would be nice. 
Cut and paste not on menu though this has very windows like key bindings (C-X/C/V/U = cut/copy/paste/undo) Too bad there's no edit menu.
No online help. 
Word wrap would also be nice.


GOOD BUT REQUIRE COMMERCIAL STUFF :

red	Motif based.

Nice pop-up dialogue boxes that _explain key bindings, lots of pulldown
menus. I like it. Key bindings are pretty easy for doze users (M-x = cut etc)
Unfortunately seems to have a tendency to open huge windows (ouch! I just
have 800x600!) otherwise very nice. Word wrap very smooth also.



nedit. Motif based

Darn cool. The best I've seen. Pulldown menus are good. Customizable 
powerful and easy. No major annoyances.




UNSUITABLE STUFF:
____________


Vi and EMACS

Vi is eloquent, and emacs is powerful. But these aren't the thing for our target audience. 


TCL-Edit

Nice, but too tiny (5k). Doesn't really have any features to speak of except that since it uses tcl-tk it looks nice.

Xcoral	

After the nth core dump, I spat the dummy. Also, the UI is annoying. Lacks decent mouse support.


Sam

ughhh.

JED

Not bad as a console editor. Unfortunately, xjed doesn't bring in a GUI. 
And pico is more user friendly as a console editor.


THE	

Ouch. I just couldn't make a head or tale of this. Cryptic text editor that
is even more confusing than vi for the beginner. 

Cool-edit:

Very slow. NOt that easy to use.

Tedx

Not a bad editor, but feels more like a console editor, not really GUI editor.


wily	

Too ugly. Ughhh. 

OffiX

Too darn ugly! 



********************************************************

TO-DO :

TkDesk editor
SeX

non free editors that I haven't seen:

Scriptum   (note: motif based,I think)
KEdit  	(requires QT)
yudit from RH contrib  (requires motif or QT.)