[graycat]

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.

[stephengillie]

"Shouldering" the phone is an age-old technique.

Who doesn't have notepad++ (or another text editor) autosaving to a dropbox-synced folder these days?

[ams6110]

Jotting a name and phone number on paper (assuming you have pen and paper handy) is way faster than trying to type it on a 2" x 3" keyboard.

[stephengillie]

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.

[graycat]

> "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.

[stephengillie]

You're overthinking the entire process.

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.

[graycat]

> 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.

[stephengillie]

You're quite verbose...