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by 72deluxe 4494 days ago
A text editor in a browser? There seems a lot of excitement about it but I can't work out why - can anyone explain? I'm not trying to be argumentative; I really am curious! It's for editing text and there appears to be massive excitement about it....?
3 comments
shirro 4493 days ago
Considering I am currently working on a ChromeBook, yeah it is is interesting for a class of users.

There are some well known web IDEs like C9 etc that don't really appeal to me and there is a Chrome app called Caret that look very Sublime Text like but lacks plugins. I am happily working with vim and tmux (although I have Sublime Text in a chroot if I felt the need) but Web IDEs have potential.

I had a play with something called godev and it had support for godoc, go-oracle, godef, fmt etc as well as all the usuals like syntax highlighting etc based on Eclipse Orion. It lacked a lot of editor features though and things like git integration so it wasn't really practical but it made me realise there is potential for self hosting a web ide.

I get the feeling there is a space for an open web ide to take off. Many of the current offerings are tied to hosted services and don't look overly customisable.

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zeckalpha 4493 days ago
It's not necessarily in a browser. It just seems to be using WebKit as an engine. This means that rather than having to embed e.g. vimscript, elisp, or Python into your editor to make it extensible, you get JavaScript for free. And graphics.
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no_gravity 4494 days ago
I for one use my own web-based version control system and project management. If there was a good web-based texteditor that is 100% vim compatible, I could stop switching between a browser and a shell.
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72deluxe 4494 days ago
What sort of stuff do you work on? Do you use a web based editor to modify stuff locally or is it for web based stuff hosted the other side of the world?

I always SSH'd into boxes and edited stuff there if necessary, or had a local copy to work on using "normal" editors and synced it. But now I'm writing C++ so I am blessed with good IDEs so perhaps that is why I am missing the excitement over a text editor?

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no_gravity 4494 days ago
I work on web based stuff on the other side of the world.

I edit code in vim in screen in ssh.

Used many IDEs in the past, but settled on pure vim.

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72deluxe 4493 days ago
Ah I see the draw of an editor in a page then. Now I understand the excitement.

Thanks!

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