Software request --> Jed

[gtc]

Ok, local copy of Jed is up, running, and in beautiful color with PHP indenting and syntax hilighting!  The trick was to ln -s slang to slang-1.4.3 in the ../ directory from the jed source.  Compiled great and installed fine after setting my paths and local variables properly.

I've tried to get my brain (and fingers) around vi/vim, but can't.  I'm wrecked by emacs now, but luckily I like it!  Good old escape meta alt  control shift (but, with Jed, at least not eighty megs and constantly swapping ).

I've been a bit discouraged with the recent trends in the Linux world.  I started out as a linux zealot, but have since become a confirmed *BSD snob.  I find the BSD's to take a bit more rational approach to releases and internal consistency.

IMHO, redhat has done some increadibly dim things re their version 7 release.  If I went back to Linux, I'd probably go with Debian or Slackware.

There, now I've committed three cardinal sins--started a vi vs. emacs debate, distro bashing, AND an OS religious war!

Geoff
[This message has been edited by gtc (edited 02-20-01@8:53 pm)]

[sheila]

I'll get the popcorn.

[Terra]

Ok, my personal 'quick' views:

Editor
vi vs. emacs: I choose neither and have the common belief that all *nix/Linux CLI editors bite.

Distro
RH-6.2: provides the most bang for the bug and has held up well in heavy production usage

RH-7.0: most likely their Planning/Design meetings consisted of Shrooms and Tequila

SlackWare: very old school - very difficult to maintain across a server farm

Debian: slow to update and usually a generation behind

Suse: No first hand knowledge other than watching them struggle with ReiserFS

OS:
Linux: freedom of expression and is enjoying a very rapid evolution in the software and capability areas...  Very rich in documentation and support that far exceeds the *BSD arena...  Linux 2.4.x is a year too late and 2.2.x caused us nothing but grief with countless SMP and VM layer problems...

OpenBSD: Feels like you are spelunkering through a twisting array of dark and deep catacombs...  It is by far my favorite of the *BSD offerings especially when you dive down into the IPSec and IPFilter layers...  If you value the security of OpenBSD, then you pretty much stick to the default base system and make the best of it...  The slowest of all the listed OS's, but that is the price you pay for analistic correctness...

FreeBSD: Not as constrained as OpenBSD, has an *awesome* TCP/IP stack and a very robust VM and fork/exec layer...  Some parts of that I grafted into Linux which helped to solve many of our SMP contention problems...  Documentation is out there, if you look in the right places...  It's software capabilities is impressive as it's Ports branch increases...

--
Terra
--I can assure you that penguins are not always cute and cuddly--
FutureQuest

[heath]

A series of dumb questions:

1. Do you guys **REALLY** use an editor on a remote machine to do extensive work?

I find that even on my ISDN line that attempting to do anything productive with VIM when logged into FQ is a nightmare.

What if you lose your phone connection in the middle of an edit?

This seems like the craziest thing I've ever heard, but I could be missing something.

2. Terra wrote:

vi vs. emacs: I choose neither and have the common belief that all *nix/Linux CLI editors bite.

Curious what this leaves as your choices?

Best I can tell, all the nix based editors are CLI based.  Curious what your fav editing enviorment is.

My favorite editing enviornment is **NONE** and I've tried to learn to be equally effecient in all *nix based editors because you never know what will or won't be installed on a machine.

As far as Emacs goes, I feel like Richard Stallman and half the universe is telling ONE BIG, REALLY FUNNY JOKE, and I'm not gonna understand the punch-line.

In other words, much like a teen-age girl without the latest Backstreet Boy's CD --

I FEEL EXTREMELY LEFT OUT.

Heath
(been through the emacs tutorial twice and still not aroused by its so-called beauty)
[This message has been edited by heath (edited 02-22-01@09:28 am)]

[gtc]

For my part:
(1) Yes, I do a bit of my editing remotely.  

I haven't found a program I really like to do it locally.  Of of the PHP editors, PHPed might do it, but it's too unstable now--see http://www.soysal.com/PHPEd.  I like HomeSite, but I wish it had better remote file transfer abilities--I haven't figured out how its comlicated project stuff works.

Dreamweaver3 (have not tried DW4 yet) is pretty nice for a WYSIWYG (sort-of) editor, but can't do PHP too well (at least as far as I've seen).

Latency is an issue for editing remotely, and I've had my share of irritation with it.  I have a wireless broadband connection (sprintbbd), and latency can really be a problem with these connections, but Sprint has done a good of getting it lower recently 100ms to FQ).  My main annoyance now is jitter--the variation in latency from packet to packet.  This causes a kind of irregular stutter response across the network, but recently this too has improved for me.

Anything more than 200ms is horrible interactively.  Take a look at http://www.stuartcheshire.org/papers/LatencyQuest.html (no relation )

As for disconnects, they don't happen often for me (I used OpenSSH to connect).  And I save often   .

(2) I'd be interested in Terra's choice of GUI editors as well.  (I'll listen to anyone who can hack parts of the FreeBSD VM subsystem into the Linux kernel on a production box!)

As far as emacs go, I like xemacs and jed, so can't speak to the RMS thing.  The trick with emacs is to get the keyboard commands to become second nature, and then you're in good shape.  Makes it easier that bash, lynx, and most other unix-based programs recognize these keystrokes as well and will do the Right Thing ^TM (except that ****ed pico!).  ^a, ^a, ^k etc. can be your friend!

Also, when set up correctly, emacs does a pretty good job at auto-indentation with C, perl, java (JDE is great), etc.

The emacs tutorial is lame.  I remember trying to follow it many times and quitting.  What I did was just use the commands summarized in ORA's Linux in a Nutshell and get working on some editing while learning features as I went along.  The info pages have good, um, info as well.

But don't let me tell you what to use.  Use what you like, and have fun!  There's certainly no "morally correct" editor, so let me covet my xemacs/jed and I won't begrudge your UltraEdit.

Geoff
[This message has been edited by gtc (edited 02-22-01@2:38 pm)]

[heath]

gtc,

I like to get the opinions of those that have invested a lot of time in learning more than one editor.

I was curions if maybe I was missing something as sshing into my FQ server and editing away is something I'd only do in an emergency.

On Windows:

I literally believe I've tried everything imaginable, then some.

The BEST solution for someone that wants to edit their remote site live and use VIM or e-macs is to get one of the shareware programs that maps a virtual drive on your win machine to an ftp directory on your site. (vim and emacs on windows doesn't have any sort of sane ftp support that I could uncover)

I used FTPNetDrive (if memory serves) -- My site was basically mapped to the "e" drive in windows.  I could then open and write to the site just like I was using VIM on the FQ server, only no fear of losing connection, waiting 10 minutes for what I typed to appear, etc.

Of all the windows editors I've used, there is one that is literally heads and shoulders above the rest:

Visual Slick Edit.

I've heard the Linux version is horrid, but this one stands heads and shoulders above the rest.  In this case, it isn't a holy war of which editor one prefers, Visual Slick Edit Pro is just simply the best windows based text editor I've seen.

Its also expensive.

At the end of the day, I paid 39 bucks to use UltraEdit and sometimes if I get fed up its HTMLKit.

Still, I feel like there is some hidden, undeniable beauty in Emacs -- if I could just find it, grasp it and learn to love it I wouldn't feel so left out when people go to war over which editor is the best.

In any event, I agree that Linux In a Nutshell is a great reference for Emacs and I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on jed, Emacs, et al.