| Sysop: | Amessyroom |
|---|---|
| Location: | Fayetteville, NC |
| Users: | 42 |
| Nodes: | 6 (0 / 6) |
| Uptime: | 01:41:37 |
| Calls: | 220 |
| Calls today: | 1 |
| Files: | 824 |
| Messages: | 121,542 |
| Posted today: | 6 |
On 10/31/2024 10:57 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
On 10/30/2024 8:17 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
I could not get plugin manager to download - not sure if
it is a JEdit VMS problem or just a network setup problem - anyway
one can just download the plugins and copy them
to [.jedit.5^.5^.0.jars] and they seem to work - I don't
want to use JEdit without the BufferTabs and JDiff plugins.
install BufferTabs plugin
install JDiff plugin
It does syntax coloring.
Works fine for C, Java etc..
Not quite as fine for VMS Basic, VMS Pascal, DCL etc..
But for those that want it then you can add a [.jedit.5^.5^.0.modes]whatever.xml and and put
a ref into [.jedit.5^.5^.0.modes]catalog. to
get it.
On 10/31/2024 1:18 PM, Arne Vajh°j wrote:
On 10/31/2024 10:57 AM, Arne Vajh°j wrote:
On 10/30/2024 8:17 PM, Arne Vajh°j wrote:
I could not get plugin manager to download - not sure if
it is a JEdit VMS problem or just a network setup problem - anyway
one can just download the plugins and copy them
to [.jedit.5^.5^.0.jars] and they seem to work - I don't
want to use JEdit without the BufferTabs and JDiff plugins.
install BufferTabs plugin
install JDiff plugin
It does syntax coloring.
Works fine for C, Java etc..
Not quite as fine for VMS Basic, VMS Pascal, DCL etc..
But for those that want it then you can add a
[.jedit.5^.5^.0.modes]whatever.xml and and put
a ref into [.jedit.5^.5^.0.modes]catalog. to
get it.
So I did a first attempt on DCL, VMS Pascal and VMS Basic
support.
https://www.vajhoej.dk/arne/vmsstuff/jedit/
has some instructions in content.txt and a
jedit-bundle.zip with everything.
Not everybody likes JEdit, but modern GUI editors
for VMS is not exactly a crowded space. :-)
Have fun.
Arne
A na∩ve question : I have never been exposed, I must admit, to "modern
GUI editors". What more do they have to offer compared to, for example,
good old DECWindows LSE (with EDT keypad of course) ? Could you try to convince me ?
Arne Vajhøj was thinking very hard :
So I did a first attempt on DCL, VMS Pascal and VMS Basic
support.
https://www.vajhoej.dk/arne/vmsstuff/jedit/
has some instructions in content.txt and a
jedit-bundle.zip with everything.
Not everybody likes JEdit, but modern GUI editors
for VMS is not exactly a crowded space. :-)
A naïve question : I have never been exposed, I must admit, to "modern
GUI editors". What more do they have to offer compared to, for example,
good old DECWindows LSE (with EDT keypad of course) ? Could you try to convince me ?
On 11/4/2024 6:19 AM, Marc Van Dyck wrote:
Arne Vajhøj was thinking very hard :
So I did a first attempt on DCL, VMS Pascal and VMS Basic
support.
https://www.vajhoej.dk/arne/vmsstuff/jedit/
has some instructions in content.txt and a
jedit-bundle.zip with everything.
Not everybody likes JEdit, but modern GUI editors
for VMS is not exactly a crowded space. :-)
A naïve question : I have never been exposed, I must admit, to "modern
GUI editors". What more do they have to offer compared to, for example,
good old DECWindows LSE (with EDT keypad of course) ? Could you try to
convince me ?
I don't know if I can convince you that JEdit is great.
Maybe I can convince you that it is worth trying out.
First a caveat. I don’t have much experience with LSE. I have seen both
the VT interface and the DECWindows interface. But I never liked LSE. I
was always an EVE person on VMS. My clear impression is that LSE was a
good product in its time, but it has not evolved for 30+ years.
Next the editor vs IDE discussion. I see it more as scale than as two buckets. So if I were to put various editors/IDE's on the scale it
would be:
editor <------------------------------------> IDE
EDT EVE JEdit LSE VSCode Eclipse
Nice features in JEdit:
* Support multiple horizontal and vertical split of screen.
* Syntax coloring for a ton of languages - both old and new.
* The BufferTabs plugin (as opposed to the builtin buffer switcher) is
pretty nice for working with lots of open files.
* The JDiff plugin makes it easy to see difference in two files
side by side with color highlighting.
* Can read and write files in all sorts of encodings.
* Can convert tab characters to spaces.
* Bracket matching.
* Smart indent.
* The XML plugin does nice auto complete for XML and HTML
* There is a FTP/SFTP plugin to allow access to remote files. I have
never liked that though - I always prefer to edit locally and then
FTP/SFTP.
* Anyone that has used a recent editor/IDE/wordprocessor on PC can
use JEdit. It comes with documentation, but there is really
no reason to read it. Menus, icons, right click context menu are
mostly as expected. I probably only use 20% of the functionality -
lots left to investigate, but if I need something I find it in the
menus.
* Same UI on Windows, Linux, VMS, macOS, FreeBSD etc. (on
Windows and various *nix there are lots of editors to pick from,
but on VMS the offerings are more limited)
There may not be many "must have" features, but I think there are a lot
of "nice to have" features.
Not so nice things with JEdit:
* Slow startup time – so keep it open and close and open files
from within.
* Rather ugly font.
* Default RFM is STMLF not VAR.
But besides all the objective pros and cons then editor choice also has
a significant subjective aspect – some may love it – some may hate it.
If you are in the market for a graphical editor on VMS, then it seems
obvious to give JEdit a try and see if you like it or not. Worst case
is that you don’t like it and you have wasted an hour or two of
your time.
Arne
I'm already convinced by the IDE concept. I tried to introduce that
in my company without success, total lack of interest. I was starting
from very far, though. People were (and still are, as far as I know)
FTPing files in and out to edit them locally on their desktop PCs.
So they didn't even let me start a proof of concept...
What I was more interested in your reply was the purely editing part,
and that seems to have some interesting points that I'd like to try.
But I'm still very much DECset oriented and will probably miss the SCA features if I abandon LSE, though, so it will be a difficult choice.
I'm mainly programming in PASCAL, it that matters.
On 11/6/2024 4:49 AM, Marc Van Dyck wrote:
But I'm still very much DECset oriented and will probably miss the SCA
features if I abandon LSE, though, so it will be a difficult choice.
JEdit is no silver bullet.
(JEdit does have a console plugin that can put a command window inside
the editor, but I don't see why anyone would prefer that over a separate terminal window)
Not everyone like JEdit, but:
* it is a modern editor with the type of UI expected today
* it does run on VMS in a reasonable recent version
* it has the exact same look and feel across platforms
(VMS, Windows, Linux)
Not that many editors match all of those.
On 2024-10-30, Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
Not everyone like JEdit, but:
* it is a modern editor with the type of UI expected today
Expected by who ?
I could not get plugin manager to download - not sure if
it is a JEdit VMS problem or just a network setup problem - anyway
one can just download the plugins and copy them
to [.jedit.5^.5^.0.jars] and they seem to work - I don't
want to use JEdit without the BufferTabs and JDiff plugins.
On 10/30/2024 8:17 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
I could not get plugin manager to download - not sure if
it is a JEdit VMS problem or just a network setup problem - anyway
one can just download the plugins and copy them
to [.jedit.5^.5^.0.jars] and they seem to work - I don't
want to use JEdit without the BufferTabs and JDiff plugins.
If anyone want to take it for a spin then I suggest
the following.
Global Options - Editing - enable soft tabs [to get spaces instead of tabs]
Global Options - Saving & Backup - disable two stage save and max
backups 0 [to work with VMS file versions]
Global Options - General - disable restore open files and split [unless
you like to hop right back in]
install BufferTabs plugin
options enable by default
options location top
(and Global Options - View - disable show buffer switcher [to avoid duplication])
install JDiff plugin
There's a reason why lots of people still use emacs
and vi even on operating systems where the fancy GUI alternatives are mainstream available.
On Wed, 6 Nov 2024 10:44:13 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
(JEdit does have a console plugin that can put a command window inside
the editor, but I don't see why anyone would prefer that over a separate
terminal window)
Emacs has similar options. It’s handy in being able to deal with large amounts of command output.
For example, I might search for places in multiple source files that need some fix applied, and collect the list in a command window. Then, as I fix each one, I delete that entry from the list.
... today one can have multiple windows open and can just
copy paste from a terminal window to the editor.