I want to write Web pages with PHP, HTML, MySQL and Javascript. I've been
wondering about what editor to use in my developement. I have suse linux so it
would have to run on linux. I am used to Windows so I am thinking that I
should use Quanta. But there are the emac and xmac and the vi editors. I am
not familiar with how those work, but would I be missing out on them if I
decide not to use them?__Would_they_be_better_than_Quanta?__
See_I'm_trying_to_figure_out_what_would_be_best._I_plan_to_do_lots
of Web development.

Also, as a side not. I really don't understand emac or vi. Why would I want to use keyboard commands to navigate in text files when I can have a GUI to do everything? Does emac or vi have any advantage from me just using kate in KDE? Why should I use emac or vi when I can use a text editor in a GUI? I just don't want to miss something here.

I don't care about linux or windows, I just care about making web sites, so I'm looking for an editor for that. Does anybody have any suggestions?

Nick

Have you looked into Blue Fish? I find that more windows like and more GUI-ish while it still devotes a large portion of the screen to the HTML file, it should come with SuSE if you have the disks, if not its free from their FTP servers.

You sound like you want some serious web page meat to be handled. Quanta and Bluefish kind of wean you along and do things for you, for a complex webpage it may be better to just use a text editor.

The only version of Emacs I've used is Jove, and I didn'tlike it. VI is supposedly very fast once you get used to it...but learning vi/vim can be like learning HTML all over again :-). Kate will handle your text files fine. The advantadges of Emacs and vi/vim are that they run in the terminal and don't require X, which would slow a server down. Also it is much easier to gain root access on vi/vim than it is w/ a program like quanta or bluefish. You can run kate from the command line, but it opens up significantly slower (like 45 seconds IMHO), and u need the terminal window open to run it.

There are a few other programs I'd sugest too, Jedit is an X programmers editor. Then there is jed and xjed (not related to jedit) jed is a terminal text editor with drop down menus and it is designed for programmers and has a lot of different modes (C++, Perl....) that make it easier to read your code and format it to your liking better. Try pico or joe if you don't like anything else.

To answer your question the only thing you would be missing out on by not usin vi/vim is more things to remember and easier root access. Oh and u don't need X if you want a fast server.

HAHAHA!!! that is a good one! If you care abou making web sites...u care about linux, or at the least you have nothing to care about with windows.

edit: jedit comes w/ suse, jed and xjed are available from http://www.jedsoft.org (its included w/ slack if u care)

Thank you for the good information.

Quote:

"If you care about making web sites...u care about linux.."

True.

I made the fortunate decision to learn vi at the same time I learned my first programming language, C. Reasons to use it are

vi commands are *fast*. Beats reaching over for your mouse every couple of seconds by a longshot

vi is everywhere. When you first install any sort of *nix, the only editor that is essentially guaranteed to be there is vi. If you don't know how to use it and you need to edit a config file, tough luck.

You can use it over an ssh session. Same goes for emacs.

It's flexible. You can script in new tweaks and features to suit your environment. e.g. "If I create a new file below this directory, automatically add this license notice to the top of it" or "for files of this extension, use this syntax hilighting", etc.

Most of the things I've said about vi are true of emacs, but I don't use emacs so I'm not saying much about it. Also, I actually use vim whenever possible, not vi. It's basically backwards compatible in regards to all commands. I'm not sure if vi does syntax hilighting; vim does.

To edit web (html, jsp) pages, I'm using elvis (another vi clone), that, like vim, is doing syntax highlighting (the standard vi doesn't).

One cool feature with elvis is that it has an html mode, where the tags are no more displayed, but somewhat interpreted (a la linx), so by toggling between the two modes, you can very quickly have a preview of the resulting page.

Learn vi, even if it's cumbersome and frustrating at the beginning, you'll never regret it later.

vim is godly.

I'm not sure where the emacs people are. their baby is getting trashed all over the place in this thread and not one has shown his face.


I guess we can proclaim victory now?

You can forget about that! I am not saying which of the two is best, vi/emacs, but I am a convinced emacs user.
I think emacs definately has great syntax highlighting and is quite intuitive compared to vi. Emacs has all that vi has and more, it is easy extensible, you can easily use regular expressions and has a shortcutkey for practically every thing it can do (btw. these keys are way easier to learn then the vi commands).
Plus, emacs can handle multiple buffers, which comes in very handy when programming or development of websites. Not to forget, it has functions to compile and debug source code with external tools within the program. And if you desperately want to use your vi commands, it can be done by a special vi-mode.
Emacs also has 2 modes, a terminal mode if X isn't present and a GUI mode if X is there.

I think emacs mustn't be underestimated, remember that it is an editor that was (and is) used for years in the industry!

Well crap! I guess I challenge you to a duel then.

I do have to rebutt a couple of points:

• You can search/replace/do other stuff with regular expressions in vi. To search, type /regex<enter>. To replace type :s/replacee/replacer/. There are other twists on this theme.
• vim does multiple buffers through "windows" or via "hidden" buffers
• vim has integration with make: it will jump to compile errors for you. This works with gcc and javac at least by default, and you can customize it for whatever compiler you are using. You can use something other than make too.
• vim has several gui front ends if you want one.
• vi was used for years in the industry too, but more years than emacs. grin.

I have to concede that there is not great integration with gdb. There are a couple of vim scripts which are made to help with that on www.vim.org.

Did I deny any of these? As I've said I won't say which is best, the thing is that both are real great editors. That prefer emacs or vi almost completely depends on what editor feels best.
As it seems both editors have comparable features which go far beyond the common editor like pico or kedit. They are both built to do complex things with simple and fast commands.

EDIT: oh and about vi being used for many more years in the industry... Yes indeed, vi is with us for a long time (1976 if I am right), but don't forget that vi has been just a simple editor with regular expressions for a long time. When all the extra features came in, EMACS was already around (and popular). Vi was popular in the industry, yes but there was no really good editor around.

Other option is to use the propietary Zend Studio.

Go to http://www.zend.com and you can download a trial. On the main page theres a button that tells you that there is a Beta of the next version of Zend Studio (3.5), I would recommend you download that instead of the current stable version. I've been using the beta and it is very stable.

It is a good IDE for programming in PHP, it has many useful features, the only problem is that it is not Free Software (as in freedom nor as in free beer).

If you want to stick with Free/Open Source programs, then there is Screem which is a fork of Bluefish and I find it more useful (has CVS tools, and FTP for example).

http://www.screem.org

If you are going to need to edit files remotely, then you must consider what have already been said on this thread, learn either one of Vim, Emacs, Joe, jed, pico, elvis, etc....

I would recommend you seriosly try to learn either Vim or Emacs. Which one? That's up to you.. But don't ask on any forum because you will never get a definite answer. It is the infinite holy war of Vim vs. Emacs.

Yes, your answer is completely right,
GUI:
* Screem/Bluefish
* Quanta

I prefer screem over quanta, quanta is a polished editor with some extra functions, but screem really is a true html editor.

Non-GUI (classic editors):
* Emacs
* Vi

There are enough open HTML editors available, I don't see a need in proprietary stuff

am i too late for the flame wars :-)

If you want to do web developpement, use an editor that you feel comfortable with and look at how the others evolve to fullfill your needs. I use vi/vim sometimes, i still don't do static html developpement so i use eclipse which is not really the drag and drop thing but is more usable compared to others ides for java.

vi is on any unix system by default while others aren't so learning vi could help you one day. emacs is used by many programmers too but not me.

if you know your code, you don't need an ide and even not a graphical interface for linux unless you are developping gui applications too. For something quick and dirty or if there are too many files to watch at the same time i use an ide otherwise i use vi/vim for quick editing/replacing/modifying

One month ago I still used vi as my primary developing tool but now I'm using Magic C++( http://www.magicunix.com ) to finish most of my programming tasks. It's a C/C++ IDE under windows just like VC++ which supoorts develop app under remote Unix/Linux server, very interesting and handy. But if you don't prefer to work in windows then it's nothing.

I personally prefer emacs to vi only because of usability. All I had to learn to use Emacs was to save its "Ctrl+S,Ctrl+X,Ctrl+S". Instead of fiddling with the Insert button, the ":", and other weird things. Oh and I must link to this.