May 14, 2008 at 10:25 pmE: All pathos TextMate for Windows
E is not the first text editor for Windows whose developers were inspired by Mack's TextMate . Last year I wrote about InType - a curious, but very slowly developing project. By and large, I also did not expect sensational discoveries from E, but still I installed a trial version. And not in vain.
An unusual detail is immediately striking - a strict orientation to keyboard control. The toolbar familiar to Windows applications is completely absent, and almost all menu commands have shortcuts defined. This also applies to snippets, which will be discussed separately.
/2008/05/e_screenshot_effect_small.jpg "E text editor")
In fact, UI E is completely devoid of pathos, which is nice.
From my point of view, this solution is very correct, because when working with text, I already give preference to the keyboard more than the mouse, and a heap of colored buttons creates extra visual noise. Nevertheless, the rejection of the usual copy / paste buttons will be recognized by far from any user. Too radical change.
/2008/05/e.png "E text editor")
In general, the interface pleases with reasonable minimalism.
The basic capabilities of E are quite extensive. There are even original details for editors of this class:
Now, the fun part. Snippet
sets are a fairly common feature that is common in many development editors. As a rule, it looks like a three-story menu filled with dozens, if not hundreds, of templates. In practice, this is not a very useful thing, because it is often easier to quickly type text with your hands than to remember exactly where a suitable template is located. In E, things are different with snippets. At first glance, the Bundles menu in which they are collected is truly depressing with its congestion. However, its contents are very reasonably organized.
Each bundle is not just a set of text blanks, but a package that extends the functionality of the editor. In E, such packages are associated with various syntactic schemes, each of which provides not only a set of commands for inserting typical text fragments, but also a number of more intelligent operations.
For example, word and syntax completion, commenting or uncommenting a selected fragment, execution of a script (or just the current line) by an interpreter, visual color selection (very convenient for inserting HEX codes into CSS), alphabetical sorting of lines. I have given just a few examples to illustrate the range of possible operations; it’s pointless to list everything, because there are several hundred of them.
An interesting point is that the hot keys for identical in meaning commands from different packages often coincide, and their selection occurs automatically, depending on the active syntax scheme. So Ctrl-R runs the script, regardless of whether it is written in Python or in Perl. Thanks to this, you will have to memorize fewer keyboard shortcuts and less often pick your mouse in the menu.
As already mentioned, a set of packages can be expanded with those already developed for TextMate. They can be found in the SVN repository on the project’s official website. At the time of this writing, there are 153 packages with very different specializations. There is, for example, a bundle for working with GTD-style task lists.
To make this review more complete, I will also list some negative details.
In essence, the flaws are minor and excusable.
Yes, I almost forgot. $ 34.95.
This is a crosspost from paradigm.ru .
Interface
An unusual detail is immediately striking - a strict orientation to keyboard control. The toolbar familiar to Windows applications is completely absent, and almost all menu commands have shortcuts defined. This also applies to snippets, which will be discussed separately.
In fact, UI E is completely devoid of pathos, which is nice.
From my point of view, this solution is very correct, because when working with text, I already give preference to the keyboard more than the mouse, and a heap of colored buttons creates extra visual noise. Nevertheless, the rejection of the usual copy / paste buttons will be recognized by far from any user. Too radical change.
In general, the interface pleases with reasonable minimalism.
Functionality
The basic capabilities of E are quite extensive. There are even original details for editors of this class:
- You can select an arbitrary number of text blocks (approximately as in MS Office). For a text editor, this is almost a unique feature. Even in EmEditor this is not. It is also possible to select vertical text blocks, but this is not so interesting and is implemented in many places.
- A rather original ability to copy input is provided. It can be used to set the same text fragments in different parts of the file. To understand how this works and in which cases it is applicable, the easiest way is to look at the screencast on the official website.
- Support for TextMate packages (bundles).
- Many other, less significant, but useful features: tabs (where without them); regular expression search (oh, yez!); support for any encodings, including Unicode; word completion; to-do lists, automatically generated from comments in the text; grouping files into projects; theme editor, with the ability to save color schemes; built-in web-preview; syntax highlighting for any syntax; Integration with audit control systems through TortoiseSVN and TortoiseCVS .
Packages
Now, the fun part. Snippet
sets are a fairly common feature that is common in many development editors. As a rule, it looks like a three-story menu filled with dozens, if not hundreds, of templates. In practice, this is not a very useful thing, because it is often easier to quickly type text with your hands than to remember exactly where a suitable template is located. In E, things are different with snippets. At first glance, the Bundles menu in which they are collected is truly depressing with its congestion. However, its contents are very reasonably organized.
Each bundle is not just a set of text blanks, but a package that extends the functionality of the editor. In E, such packages are associated with various syntactic schemes, each of which provides not only a set of commands for inserting typical text fragments, but also a number of more intelligent operations.
For example, word and syntax completion, commenting or uncommenting a selected fragment, execution of a script (or just the current line) by an interpreter, visual color selection (very convenient for inserting HEX codes into CSS), alphabetical sorting of lines. I have given just a few examples to illustrate the range of possible operations; it’s pointless to list everything, because there are several hundred of them.
An interesting point is that the hot keys for identical in meaning commands from different packages often coincide, and their selection occurs automatically, depending on the active syntax scheme. So Ctrl-R runs the script, regardless of whether it is written in Python or in Perl. Thanks to this, you will have to memorize fewer keyboard shortcuts and less often pick your mouse in the menu.
As already mentioned, a set of packages can be expanded with those already developed for TextMate. They can be found in the SVN repository on the project’s official website. At the time of this writing, there are 153 packages with very different specializations. There is, for example, a bundle for working with GTD-style task lists.
Some cons
To make this review more complete, I will also list some negative details.
- Immediately after installation, E confronts the fact of its own need for cygwin and automatically downloads a whole bunch of packages (including the rather heavy Perl, Python, and Ruby). Together, they occupy about 30-40 Mb. It would be wise to be able to download everything at once, as a single file. Otherwise, a full installation becomes dependent on the availability of Internet access.
- The process of downloading bundles takes a few seconds after starting the program. Everything is implemented quite competently (you can start working with text without waiting for the download to finish), but you usually usually expect more agility from a text editor. Still, not Photoshop.
In essence, the flaws are minor and excusable.
Yes, I almost forgot. $ 34.95.
Related Links
- Official site E and a direct link to the trial version.
- Documentation wiki .
- Screencast giving an idea of working with regular expressions in E.
- TextMate website and library of its extensions.
- The Wikipedia article about E.
This is a crosspost from paradigm.ru .