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2004 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards This forum is for the 2004 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards.
You can now vote for your favorite products of 2004. This is your chance to be heard! Voting closes on February 3rd.

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View Poll Results: Web Development Editor of the Year
Quanta 348 50.88%
Bluefish 165 24.12%
Ginf 0 0%
Screem 32 4.68%
Nvu 94 13.74%
Mozilla Composer 45 6.58%
Voters: 684. You may not vote on this poll

 
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Old 02-06-2005, 01:39 AM   #91
reddazz
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Registered: Nov 2003
Location: N. E. England
Distribution: Fedora, CentOS, Debian
Posts: 16,298

Rep: Reputation: 77

The current CVS version of Quanta is even better than the previous versions. It's truly the best web development tool for me.
 
Old 02-06-2005, 05:18 AM   #92
kedman
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Location: Cardiff
Distribution: Fedora core 3
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Re: Re: Re: Reality Check

Quote:
Originally posted by pnellesen
Not necessarily!! I'm running Quanta in XFCE with no problems... (Helps to have KDE installed on the machine, though ) As a matter of fact, I was running in Gnome till I switched to XFCE...

Just had to clear that up

HI
Now thats sounds good! I've just started playing with XFCE, its nice and fast!!
A change on the way me thinks

cheers
Bob
 
Old 02-07-2005, 09:24 AM   #93
Darkelve
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Registered: May 2004
Location: Belgium
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Quanta

The only thing comparable to Quanta in the Windoze world, IMO, is Html-kit. Although Quanta seems to have better project management features.

Dreamweaver is an excellent product, but it's overrated sometimes. Still, I'm glad no-one mentioned the KING of all web dev editors: FRONTPAGE!! </bitter sarcasm> (of course we all know FP is only good for making websites that appear here: http://www.worstoftheweb.com/ )

nVu seems decent but I never liked the way it uses inline styles so much... that's such a waste of bandwidth and problematic for re-usability!

Quote:
Actually we are working on direct manipulation of CSS in visual mode too fr 4.0.
If you guys can get that realized, then you are my GODS... I mean it! Q: will it offer some kind of 'grid' mode where you can visually design the structure (position) of your CSS, after which you can then add colors/graphics/... and content?

IMhO, that would make it the most powerful and high-quality Html Dev. Editor out there.

Last edited by Darkelve; 02-07-2005 at 09:28 AM.
 
Old 02-07-2005, 02:49 PM   #94
sequitur
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Registered: Nov 2003
Location: Oregon
Distribution: Gentoo
Posts: 11

Rep: Reputation: 0
Re: Quanta

Quote:
Originally posted by Darkelve
The only thing comparable to Quanta in the Windoze world, IMO, is Html-kit. Although Quanta seems to have better project management features.
Perceptions of Quanta I think vary with how far you go into it. For instance, using HTML-kit can you open an XML file with a DTD you've never seen, import the DTD on the fly and immediately begin auto completing with real time structural validation? Will it generate tags rigidly specific to XHTML 1.0 strict, or XHTML 1.1? I seriously doubt it because this functionality is typically the domain of Java XML tools and legacy Windows HTML tools don't have the infrastructure. Here's another question for your Windows editor. Can you make any file or project action trigger a custom (visually) built dialog which can perform script actions or process files in the editor? Again, Kommander and DCOP can't be matched, though Dreamweaver does have some tools that are close.

Quote:
Dreamweaver is an excellent product, but it's overrated sometimes. Still, I'm glad no-one mentioned the KING of all web dev editors: FRONTPAGE!! </bitter sarcasm> (of course we all know FP is only good for making websites that appear here: http://www.worstoftheweb.com/ )

nVu seems decent but I never liked the way it uses inline styles so much... that's such a waste of bandwidth and problematic for re-usability!
nVu gets some press for their promotion. Initially they said they wanted to be FrontPage on Linux. Seriously, this is their target... visually drawn amorphous HTML. Their initial announcements looked like they never heard of us because they said they were the most powerful editor on Linux and they they were going to be the first to ship WYSIWYG. In fact our VPL (Visual Page Layout) enabled version shipped in 3.1 final months before their initial release. (Admittedly the first effort was a lot of work and as such was not very good and barely acceptable for release, but it was first.) I emailed them informing them of factual problems with their bold claims and they changed it. I checked their site and I noticed there was not even a document declaration declared. I admit our site is out of date and ugly and I'm building a new site now, but even today while they declare 4.01 transitional they set style in the body tag and use the font tag everywhere with heavy use of tables. They may as well declare HTML 3.2 because it's very transitional. FrontPage goals met? Try to edit compliant XHTML 1.0 transitional or strict with it. I seriously doubt this will even happen without a major overhaul.

Years ago Jono Bacon was working on Kafka for WYSIWYG on KDE and in conversations I told him that it lacked infrastructure and we would add a visual mode to Quanta only after we were able to do it right. He later wrote me that he was happy to say my vision was right. Quanta's VPL uses styling now and does not mangle your document, changing only the nodes it edits. It also has split mode. I really think nVu is on target for an unsophisticated audience but is not a serious tool, even though I do think they have some very interesting ideas in addition to their backwards legacy HTML view.

Quote:
If you guys can get that realized, then you are my GODS... I mean it! Q: will it offer some kind of 'grid' mode where you can visually design the structure (position) of your CSS, after which you can then add colors/graphics/... and content?
Currently you will note that VPL is very slightly different from real preview. For one thing it shows icons now for PHP code but because we have all the trees and access with Gubed and project preview that may change too. Anyway there are visual indications for tables and edit areas. I don't honestly use it that much because I do so much PHP but Nicolas never put a context sensitive interface in because I guess with the language differences he didn't get what I was saying at the time. Moura currently is developing for a year full time as part of his college studies, and Nicolas may do this too. Moura has added context menus for tables for 3.4 already. Currently you can select text and using the Attribute Editor move to the tag containing it or a parent tag and invoke the CSS dialogs for inline style. You can also choose CSS selectors for the class. What we are planning is to be able to select an object and directly manipulate it. For instance right click and from a div menu set alignment and such. Suppose a block element is absolutely positioned. By dragging it the position coordinates would pop up and display in real time as you move it.

All of this will take some exploration for the best UI, but we have several guys who will be on this with serious time as well as several developers on KHTML coordinating. In addition to this we are targeting XML/CSS, XSLT on the fly layer and limited PHP loop and logic support for VPL. My objective by version 4 of KDE and Quanta is to be the undisputed winner in a shootout with Dreamweaver or any other Windows editor. We are also looking to extend our project support, team development tools and add the ability to create interface and access profiles for tasks and roles. Oh, and there will be a messaging and annotation service built in and managed with the project repository. In addition to this Kommander will be mature and enabled even easier point and click interface creation. Using KNewStuff it will be easy to share visual extentions for Quanta and it will be easy for teams to enable their own private resource repositories.

Quote:
IMhO, that would make it the most powerful and high-quality Html Dev. Editor out there.
Without a doubt, and I haven't even gotten to the object template construction interface that is in discussion between developers. I think for many if not most web developers version 3.3 and 3.4 will win the shootout with their favorite Windows tools. My objective is that by 2006 and 2007 comparisons with professional Windows tools are total mind exploding no brainers with the obvious conclusion that remaining on Windows is costing the web development team a minimum 10%-30% more time and vastly limiting their control and ability to produce a quality product.

I invite people who are interested to help us achieve that by coding, donating or sponsoring (we have two sponsored developers) and getting involved with our resource repositories we will be working on by clicking the "upload" menu item when you have developed a cool template or toolbar.
 
Old 02-07-2005, 03:44 PM   #95
kedman
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Registered: Feb 2003
Location: Cardiff
Distribution: Fedora core 3
Posts: 18

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Re: Re: Quanta

Quote:
I invite people who are interested to help us achieve that by coding, donating or sponsoring (we have two sponsored developers) and getting involved with our resource repositories we will be working on by clicking the "upload" menu item when you have developed a cool template or toolbar. [/B]

Can I use it in Gnome of will I need XFCE?
Cheers
Bob
 
Old 02-07-2005, 04:48 PM   #96
sequitur
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Registered: Nov 2003
Location: Oregon
Distribution: Gentoo
Posts: 11

Rep: Reputation: 0
Re: Re: Re: Quanta

Quote:
Originally posted by kedman
Can I use it in Gnome of will I need XFCE?
Cheers
Bob
Quanta relies on heavy code reuse including it's editor part, preview and visual component and a lot of classes. That's why we can do so much. Quanta exists in the kdewebdev package in KDE. To run it on GNOME or XFCE you need Qt and kdelibs, and of course the kdewebdev package. In addition to Quanta kdewebdev includes an XSL debugger, visual link checker, image map editor and Kommander. Kommander visually builds dialogs that can work with any scripting language or create functionality with a point and click function browser and internal DCOP functions. It integrates with user programmable Actions for editor interaction and project and template actions. Quanta actually uses several Kommander dialogs, like HTML Quick start and will use Kommander more in the future. Kommander is handy for any quick do it yourself admin tool or interface to a program.

If you want to integrate a visual CVS interface and use a built in visual diff program you need the kdesdk package which also gives you UML. Cervisia is the CVS interface and it is split into the visual component and a nonvisual DCOP interface to a CVS service process. Quanta uses this interface and version 3.2 can commit and update directly from the project context menus. It can also run Cervisia in a file tab as a plug in. In the upcoming 3.4 many more CVS commands are integrated and when Cervisia handles Subversion this will be transparently inherited. The recovery routine makes use of the Kompare visual diff program as an option if newer backup files are found on startup. Crashes are rare but backups make sense. When several people discovered a rare delete bug in 3.1.4 and wiped out a project we showed them where to find all their backups and they restored almost all their work. If you have Tidy it also integrates by default in the main toolbars.

I should mention that if you are not using CVS you don't know what you're missing. Even if you're the only developer you still get the security of rollback and snapshots as well as setting release tags to manage a site. Setting up CVS on your system only takes a couple commands in the shell and you're done. There is a complete tutorial for CVS and Cervisia here.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=6096

Enjoy!
 
Old 02-07-2005, 05:04 PM   #97
j0ff
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Jan 2005
Distribution: Gentoo
Posts: 2

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and he said all of that in just one breath!

It seems that the longer ones hair gets, the more one has to say

Keep up the good work Eric and the team - congrats

I think it's time i donated again...... (even tho you dont appear to have broken your car!)

Joff
 
Old 02-10-2005, 02:30 PM   #98
Darkelve
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: May 2004
Location: Belgium
Distribution: OpenSUSE 10.2
Posts: 14

Rep: Reputation: 0
Thanks Eric

Eric,

you must understand the last version of Quanta I used was the version included in Mandrake 9.2... which had a bug which would make it crash at a certain action. However, even then I could see the potential of this application. When I hear you talking about the project, it seems Quanta has come a Looooong way since then.

I tried to install it again with the RPM from the Novell site (ATM I'm running SuSe 9.1 Pro). Surprise, it crashed again! Of course I don't blame Quanta, just wanted to say that I didn't have the opportunity to try out the latest Quanta. I'll probably buy SuSe 9.3, rumored to be out around April, which will likely include one of the latest Quanta versions.

I guess my affection for Html-Kit is, because it learned me writing Html and CSS code. *Good* code. I'm still grateful to the little, ugly app, which taught me and made me aware why good code matters.

There are a few reasons why I don't use Dreamweaver a lot although I have a license at work. Most important reason is that Dreamweaver's CSS rendering engine screws up our (fully standards-compliant, valid Xhtml 1.1 Transitional and CSS2.0) website, not 4.0 and not MX. This makes it really hard to work in 'layout mode', since the screen is messed up. This is also exactly the reason why we cannot use MM Contribute, which suffers from the same problem. Well, that and it does not allow a sufficient level of control and importing of custom templates (e.g. you HAVE to use Dreamweaver templates).

Your 'object templates' (or what was it called) sound very interesting.

Anyway, I wish you good luck with the project and hope you will never loose the enthusiasm and ambition for Quanta you are currently showing in your posts.

Cheers,

Darkelve

Last edited by Darkelve; 02-10-2005 at 02:32 PM.
 
  


 


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