Re: Auto-install packages

Brooks Moses said...
> Marc Cooper wrote:
> > Brooks Moses said...
> >>>Marc Cooper wrote:
> >>>>Linux seems to lack - for the Windows migrator - a mature graphical
> >>>>editor
> [...]
> >>All of those make a big difference to how effectively I interact with
> >>the editor; they're not just visual fluff.
> >
> > I agree with all of this, but I wanted to state that, in addition,
> > keyboard control is essential for me in the context of the application
> > as a whole. It's this stuff that makes the difference and seems to
> > confound some experienced progs/designers.
> [...]
> > So, my definition of "graphical" in this context, implies user
> > configurable keyboard control of the application (not of the mouse
> > cursor).
>
> Personally, I would consider keyboard control to be part of "mature"
> rather than part of "graphical", as it doesn't seem related to graphics
> as such. My only quibble is with the terminology -- I do very
> definitely agree that it's is an essential part of a good editor!

Indeed, !mature', yes.

> Another thing that I personally consider nearly essential is intelligent
> display of long lines in the source file. I want to type my paragraphs
> as single lines, and I want them to be displayed as word-wrapped as I
> type or edit them, preferably to a user-specified column rather than to
> the window boundaries, and I want them to be saved in the .tex file
> without additional linebreaks other than those I typed directly, so that
> there is no ambiguity regarding what is and what isn't a single paragraph.

I agree wholeheartedly with this too. This is something that WinEdt
does, but in a manner than is far too complex to grasp at the outset,
imo. By contrast, EditPro has a simple wrap toggle, and options for: no
wrap, wrap at window border, presets at 56, 64, 72, 80 and 96 chars, and
a user defined number of chars. You can also define your wrapping
preferences by file type - which you can override.

> (I would also like the line-number display in the editor to count _file_
> lines, rather than display lines (thereby counting only once for a long
> line in the file that has displayed in three lines on-screen). My
> current editor counts display lines; I consider this a bug.)

Yes. I've never persevered to understand how this works in WinEdt - I
find the documentation meandering, wordy and non-specific - but, again,
EditPro makes this easy, and configurable by file type.

To be specific, in EditPro, for each file type, you can toggle the
'Number lines' display and whether this is by 'Visible lines' or
'Physical lines'. Simple and straightforward. Similarly, there is a
'Word wrap' toggle by file type, and a wrap character position figure,
should you wish to fix it (zero defaults to the edge of the window when
wrapping is active).

(Aside EditPro also provides syntax colouring and what they call 'clip
collections', which makes it TeX-friendly. (There are syntax colouring
scripts available for download for all sorts of things.) Since you can
also initiate 'tools', I have EditPro setup to run LaTeX - it
automatically displays the log in a new tab - and then hit another key
on completion to view the DVI/PDF result.

Not bad for a generic editor designed and built without any special
considerations toward TeX.)

> While I'm listing general editor requirements: an undo stack a few
> hundred changes long (at least) is crucial. As is the ability to undo
> to a state prior to the last save.

Goes without saying! More specifically, an undo stack for each open
document. This feature is essential for experimentation. While I find it
handy for TeX, it comes into its own when amending a web-site with
multiple php scripts and CSSs. It saves hours of work and complex, error
prone save/restore steps.

The version of Excel that I use destroys its undo stack on save. This is
a horrible restriction. (Hopefully, the latest version of Open Office
has improved ease of use, so that I can finally dump my last M$ product
- excluding XP itself.)

--
Best,
Marc
.

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