My favorite editor is KEdit. Mostly
at my computer, I'm looking at a Web page
in Firefox or a text file in KEdit.
I use KEdit for notes of wide variety,
phone numbers, mailing addresses, etc.,
any high quality word processing via TeX,
typing in source code for software, looking
at the log files from my Web site development,
etc. Since I use KEdit on Windows XP
(hope it works on Windows 7 and Windows
Server when I convert to them),
maybe it would work on Windows phone.
> 3. Who still uses paper? That's such an edge-case :p
During a phone call, that's the only way
I know to capture info quickly. E.g.,
if the call is for me to get some info,
say, a name, phone-number, or e-mail address,
then I write it quickly on paper.
Maybe I should type in the info, but
I don't use a head set on my phone so
only have one hand available for
capturing the info.
I inscribe so infrequently that it takes me some concentration to actually draw each letter with my hand. If I don't focus it becomes an illegible mess. Typing on a full-size keyboard takes no focus at all.
I'm unusually fluent with SlideIt on my tiny 1" x 2" phone keyboard.
> "Shouldering" the phone is an age-old technique.
I used to play violin! Still I'm not good
at shouldering a phone. When I try I
pick up one of the hundred or so square
terry cloth towels I use for everything
from kitchen spills to napkins and use
the towel as a shoulder rest.
I need
to get a shoulder rest for my phone, but
my phone is an old AT&T thing with a
hand piece with a strange cross section
so that I didn't try to find a shoulder
rest.
The Microsoft editor Notepad is no competition
for KEdit (except for some strange cases
of files with Unicode); I've heard of
notepad++ and assume that there's a Windows
version but have not tried to use it.
Using a service like dropbox? I'd want
to have encryption, and I haven't set that
up yet. For de/encryption, I just want
a little command line program that reads
in data in base 64 and writes a file in
base 64. I do have some little base
64 utilities I wrote maybe 15 years ago!
I have the source
of an old, very simple version of PGP
-- that likely doesn't have any
back doors --
that I could use to create the little
de/encryption command line program,
and I have some references to some
such programs in open source
that likely also have no back doors,
but setting that up is just another
little project on the back burner.
Maybe I'm over thinking sync: I've
got several file types of my own
and in total some thousands of instances
of those types, and a true sync operation,
for each instance,
would essentially merge the contents
of a few of the instances; the merge
would have to be particular to the
file type of mine, and I couldn't find
any software to do that and don't
want to write any.
For me, if I really made good usage of
a smartphone, then during a busy few
days I'd have a file on my main PC
and a file on my smartphone, each file
with several additions (changes are
also possible), and have to sync,
i.e., essentially merge, the two files.
Else I'd have two files where I only
want one and/or lose some data.
More generally I'd also want to
sync two file system
directory trees; I don't want to
write code for that, code that would be
so good I'd want to
depend on, and haven't seen any code
for such an operation
that looks nicely polished.
I've been staying with the Microsoft
world and avoiding the Linux world
and guess that there are pros/cons
with that decision. My main consideration is that I
want the best software, documentation,
and live technical support
I can get
as a foundation for my servers in my
business; that Microsoft software I'm
counting on includes Windows XP and 7,
the .NET Framework, IIS,
Windows Server, SQL Server, and
various other of the Microsoft
products. And I want to be able to
continue to run my favorite text
editor KEdit (for which I have
about 150 macros) and my long standard
scripting language ObjectRexx.
And I have a TeX setup I like which
now is a bit non-standard, works
on Windows, but likely doesn't
have a Linux equivalent. Why not
on Linux? Because what I like is
some parts and pieces I've pulled together
from more than
one Windows distribution of TeX.
Broadly, doing things with Linux,
de/encryption, dropbox, smartphones
(VPN, backup/recovery, sync, Notepad++)
is all on the back burner instead of
crucial for getting my production
software done and my Web site live.
You're telling me that you've never shouldered an old handset? Inconceivable!
You are overthinking sync. The whole point is that when you save the file on your PC, it gets synced before you access it on your smartphone, then it gets synced again before you get back to your PC. And the whole point of these various services is that you pick one, set it up, then you can forget about it. With sync, the point is that you only have 1 file regardless of which client (text editor) or terminal (computing device) you use. You only have 1 file and folder tree which is constantly synchronized between all of your devices. There is no merge, as the file you edit on your PC has already synced the changes you made on your smartphone. I do understand the desire for encryption, and some of these services have that built in to varying degrees.
Notepad++ is one of the best text editors for Windows -- it is way better than Notepad or even Wordpad. Living down the 5 from Redmond means I've used MS products my entire life too. It's also somewhat of an IDE in that you can select a language for it to interpret a file, and it will provide keyword highlighting, bracket highlighting, and other language-specific features.
> You're telling me that you've never shouldered an old handset? Inconceivable!
Sure I've done it, including, as I mentioned,
with a towel as
an aid, but still I don't get good use of
both hands for typing. E.g., today I paid
two bills on-line. I used my computer for the
URLs, UIDs, PWs, of the Web sites, which
didn't work. Then I used a voice phone call
finding and
dialing the number from my main PC via my
text editor. Then I used the telephone voice
response and telephone touch tone pad to
do the work but had my paper based checkbook
right there, open, and used with a pen to
record my side of the transaction. I wouldn't
have wanted to have tried any of that
while traveling and/or with a mobile device.
Notepad++ sounds like a decent editor. So is
KEdit! Since I've got about 150 macros
for KEdit I wrote in their version of Rexx,
I won't change. But Notepad++ might
be help make some mobile computer that won't
run KEdit more useful.
Your idea of sync is not nearly the same as
mine. My view of sync is two files or two
hierarchical file systems where, roughly, want
to make them equal by keeping the latest
inputs
and also honoring appropriate deletes. Not so
easy to do well in general.
Your view of sync is much simpler and looks like
essentially just a file server that permits
at most one user at a time. Fine. That would
be very useful. And maybe there would be a
drive letter remote mount command so that
could access the file system on a public service
such as you mentioned.
But for that approach to sync, what I had in mind
was just leaving my main PC (likely with Windows
Server when I get that far) on all the time and
using it, in part, as a remote file server,
for my Windows XP, 7 system, Windows phone,
or iPhone if I have one and it can use
Windows Server as a file server. Then I
communicate between the mobile device and
my main server with Windows Server with
a VPN. Then since the server is locked
inside my house, maybe I will trust
in the Fourth Amendment and not encrypt
the files as they are on the server
but use the encryption in VPN for
security. Then I'll try not to have
any serious files on my mobile device.
Then losing the mobile device might not
be a huge security problem.
I'm sure Windows Server can provide the
functionality I'd need to use it
as a file server from some mobile devices over VPN.
Then with your definition of sync,
which has functionality fine with me,
the whole sync problem goes away simply
because I can't be in two places at once
and in one place would have no great reason
to be using two client devices connected
to the server at once!
That is, net, for files on a mobile device, I'd
just use VPN to connect to my main file
server which, for all purposes, has the
one and only copy of the file (except for
backups). That is, client devices, mobile,
even Windows XP or 7, just don't
have local copies of the files and, thus,
don't have files that need my complicated
version of sync.
I tried to indicate that I wanted to use
Windows Server as a file server in this
way. What I don't know is, what mobile
devices can use Windows Server and VPN
for all their file access? For security
in case I lose control of the mobile device,
I want all copies of all files
on the mobile device to be deleted, and
really deleted like overwritten and really
gone and out'a here.
I'm guessing that a lot of people are
going to be highly concerned about data
security for mobile devices, e.g., with
local police grabbing mobile devices,
the FBI/NSA snooping, mobile payments,
bitcoins, serious work with confidential
data done on a mobile device, etc. For
me for now, my solution to all those
problems is not to use a mobile device
(I do have one someone gave me,
but I don't use it!), and all like
right now within a millisecond as
I push this little button which
does not stop and ask me
"Do you really want to delete all
those files?".
My approach to an IDE seems to be unique:
To me, especially for the code I'm writing
for my business, the most important content
is not the executable statements but various
kinds of comments. When I return to some code
after a month, to heck with reading the darned
code, even though the code is typed with
beautiful indentation rules, long, mnemonic
identifier names, simple approaches to
classes, if-then-else, log file writing, and exceptional
condition handling, and, instead, just read
the comments. When I have questions,
sometimes the comments have cross references
typically with a 'target' such as
' Modified at 23:13:45 on Friday, July 19th, 2013.
which is in VB comment syntax and from a macro in
KEdit. But when there are not enough cross
references (e.g., where the heck is this
variable declared, set, used, changed?;
e.g., in this file of code, what are
all the functions/subroutines declared?),
I use the nicely functional locate
facilities of KEdit souped up with some
of my own macros.
Two of the biggies for my approach to
an IDE are:
(1) Screen Real Estate. I'd like a huge
screen or several huge screens but so far
am staying with the very nice NEC 17 inch
CRT I got when I plugged together my
Windows XP system. I will plug together
a Windows 7 system with a bigger screen, but
not today.
So, for more screen
real estate, when writing code typically I have
about a dozen windows open. And I have some
little programs of my own in ObjectRexx to
arrange the windows in nice ways.
Then I can bring any of the dozen windows
to the top of the Z order and use it without
moving any windows. So, I have close enough
to a dozen screens.
For
> keyword highlighting, bracket highlighting
KEdit has some of that functionality, but
I want nothing to do with it and keep it
turned off in KEdit! About all I let my
editor know that is "language specific"
is the comment syntax!
To me one of the great things in computing
is that source code is still essentially
just simple text in essentially just old
7 bit ASCII. Such text is really easy to
handle in many ways!
Net, I find that just making basic use of the
windowing system of Windows is a better way to
display information for my coding than the
panels in, say, Visual Studio.
(2) Documentation. My code has links
to lots of external documentation. Some of
this I wrote; some more are HTML of
articles from, say, Stack Overflow or some
Microsoft forum, but most of them are
from the 4000+ Web pages I have from
MSDN. So, each such Web page I have
described, abstracted, in a text file
I maintain with KEdit, and the abstracting
is usually good enough to let me find,
with a KEdit key word locate operation,
the right Web page when I need it.
Then in my code, I insert, say,
' SortedList Class
' H:/data05/projects/software/vb/msdn475.htm
where, of course, the tree name is on my file
system of a Web page from MSDN and the line above is the title
of the Web page. Then, right, one keystroke
in KEdit, using a macro I wrote, causes Firefox
to display the Web page. So, that's most of
my replacement of Microsoft's Intellisense,
and my version gives me the whole MSDN Web
page from which, of course, I can use the
subtree there to walk to related materials.
I have to type into something, and hopefully the
programs I type into can
be small in number and high in functionality.
So, KEdit is mostly what I type into.
For me, its macro language, based on Rexx,
is most of what makes it great. There's no
way I want to type into Visual Studio
instead of KEdit.
So far I don't want a mobile device. In time
as I do more traveling I may have to become
mobile, and then I will be highly concerned
about security, will want to keep essentially
all data on my main server in my home/office,
and access it via VPN. The sync problem
will go away because for each file,
there will be only one copy and that on
my file server (except for backups). Then,
right, for an editor for, say, light
work on a mobile device, I'd still hope
to use KEdit but otherwise would have
to try Notepad++, emacs, vi, etc.
> 3. Who still uses paper? That's such an edge-case :p
During a phone call, that's the only way I know to capture info quickly. E.g., if the call is for me to get some info, say, a name, phone-number, or e-mail address, then I write it quickly on paper. Maybe I should type in the info, but I don't use a head set on my phone so only have one hand available for capturing the info.