It is funny. The last time I followed a long thread about rails editors, the enthusiasm seemed to be for emacs. So I installed it and got used to it. It has some very good features, the first time I installed it I had trouble setting up the packages I needed for rails/ haml etc. But recently when I reinstalled my system, I discovered the package manager, which makes that very simple. The ability to have several panes open and switch between them is really handy. Emacs also offers support for some rails functions like migrations etc.
However, I do still struggle with remembering the key sequences. The emphasis in this current thread seems to be towards Vim. I did try that some time ago and never really got it set up to do highlighting correctly, (I do use vi quite a bit for simple file editing on my linux boxes). Mostly what I want from an editor is good highlighting, fast response and good indenting support. More recently, I saw Redcar mentioned and decided to give it a try. It seems very promising. It handles highlighting well, but does lose track quite easily. It was quite a large (although simple enough) gem install process. It has a long start up time too, and does as mentioned use a fair amount of resource. But as also mentioned, it is very young, and hopefully it will continually improve. I am sticking with it for the moment, but must say I am missing the emacs multi-pane display. On the plus side, though the page/window presentation of Redcar just seems cleaner. It is a fascinating subject. I wonder what research has been done about what is important in a development editor. To me the visual presentation is actually quite important to help me stay focussed on what I am doing and where I am working in the file system. It is quite hard to actually put my finger on what makes me comfortable. I always found Netbeans made me feel like I was 'doing' ruby on rails development - it sort of created a context. But it is just too overweight, and I was quite pleased to switch to emacs. Emacs can also help to give a feel of context, but I found it took a bit of effort to grasp it, and sometimes I have to stop thinking about what I am developing to figure out a key sequence I need eg for search etc. I suppose on reflection, for me, the most important criteria is, what editor allows me to just focus fully on the code I am writing without being distracted by the editor itself. Tony -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en.
