Tech: Vim editor - any experience??

Subject: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: Mr Red
Date: 12 Jun 22 - 04:59 AM

I have just got myself a Win 10 laptop. And may find the old HTML editor software I rely on will not transfer.

So I am looking to make my HTML editing with another app. Yes I still code in HTML, it is quicker when you know how.

And I code JavaScript, so a flexible editor is needed. Syntax, and error checking helps. Language look-up would be a boon, but the internet these days covers most of that.

Any ideas folkies?

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: Joe Offer
Date: 12 Jun 22 - 05:21 AM

It will be interesting to see what answers you get. I do HTML in notepad and other text editors, sometimes with the help of a word processor or spreadsheet.
I think that means I'm more primitive than you are, but I can make a pretty nice Web page now and then. I've had to do HTML at Mudcat that for 25 years, so I got pretty good.

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 12 Jun 22 - 05:27 AM

"I am looking to make my HTML editing with another app. Yes I still code in HTML, it is quicker when you know how."

Very true. I hate IDEs like the plague. I would recommend Emacs. I've occasionally used vi (or vim or whatever) but I never really warmed up to it. Emacs is, in my opinion, by far the best editor. Not that I've tried them all.

On Windows, you can get Emacs from DJGPP, as well as lots of other useful Unix stuff, ported to Windows.

DJGPP

Emacs is huge, but it's worth it. I can tell you how to turn off syntax highlighting and the blinking cursor, if you need to do this.

I used DJGPP at work when I was punished for my sins by having to write programs on a Windows system.

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: Reinhard
Date: 12 Jun 22 - 06:01 AM

I grew up in my student years with vi on Unix, and I never really warmed up to Emacs ;-) So just use the tool you're experienced and comfortable with.

So I'm building Mainly Norfolk pages with lovely hand-crafted HTML code in vim including syntax highlighing and spellchecking. But I usually put the actual content into a template that uses Apache server side includes to add the page frame and build the top navigation (Roud, Child, Ballad Index...) when the page is delivered to the caller, so that look and links are consistent over all pages. This isn't fancy enough to call it a CMS but it does what I need.

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 12 Jun 22 - 06:37 AM

I'd do some basic editing with vi/vim if I had to but would rather not. I stay away from email.

I've produced more HTML via php than I have just writing html but either way, a text editor would do. On Linux, Kate and KWite would suit me. I'm not sure about Window but Notepad++ looks like a candidate.

I've nothing against an IDE such as (possibly) Eclipse either. I'm not sure what that one offers but something with a Wysiwig HTML editor need not also provide decent text editing.

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 12 Jun 22 - 06:44 AM

opps should have been "I stay away from Emacs" above.

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 12 Jun 22 - 06:47 AM

I'm not sure there's a Windows port but if there is, you could try this:

JOE - Joe´s Own Editor

Description
JOE is a powerful console screen editor. It has a "mode-less" user interface which is similar to many user-friendly PC editors. Users of Micro-Pro´s WordStar or Borland´s "Turbo" languages will feel at home. JOE is a full features UNIX screen-editor though, and has many features for editing programs and text.

JOE also emulates several other editors. JSTAR is a close imitation of WordStar with many "JOE" extensions. JPICO is a close imitation of the Pine mailing system´s PICO editor, but with many extensions and improvements. JMACS is a GNU-EMACS imitation. RJOE is a restricted version of JOE, which allows you to edit only the files specified on the
command line.

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: DaveRo
Date: 12 Jun 22 - 07:06 AM

See my suggestions here
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=170973#4135394

Bluefish is apparantly available for windows.
https://bluefish.openoffice.nl

It's what I use for everyday, but it can get confused by some modern javascript and its bracket-matching fails so I have to resort to Atom (which has just been discontinued!).

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: migginz
Date: 12 Jun 22 - 09:32 AM

I like Notepad++, it is easy to use

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 12 Jun 22 - 10:53 AM

.... can't .... resist ....

I used to actively fear finding myself in vi, as I could never escape reliably. Then I came across somebody-or-other's Complete Guide to Using Vi, and haven't looked back:

Esc Colon Q ! Return

For the record, I'm an EMACS user, but started in ed (the original for ex, which is what's underneath vi).

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Jun 22 - 04:42 PM

Hoping this remark won't jinx it - I can still install the Office 2003 version of FrontPage into my modern Windows10 computer. It doesn't support any of the fancy stuff it used to do (that I never used) but it works find as an html editor. I alternate between code view and WYSIWYG, but mostly use the code view.

It looks like you can still get FrontPage but beware - often times places that say they have old versions of things have software filled with trojans and other malware.

Resist the urge to save anything in a writing program like MS Word into an html document. It is so bloated with MS crap that it's a mess to work with.

I also have Adobe Dreamweaver, much newer version than FrontPage, but FrontPage is so straightforward that I keep using it.

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 12 Jun 22 - 11:22 PM

Over the years, I've had to work with various text editors. I just don't like having to learn new programs that do the same thing as old ones. If I'd learned vi first, I might not have wanted to learn Emacs.

Emacs has a number of features that I use a lot. I don't know if vi has them.

1. It's programmable. When it's running, a LISP interpreter is running. It's possible to program your own functions using Emacs-Lisp and over the years I've written a lot of functions.

2. It has modes for different types of files, so the key settings are different depending on what sort of file you're editing. There's an HTML mode, a C mode, a FORTRAN mode, a TeX mode, etc.

3. It has abbreviations, so, for example, I can type "prgrm" and when I type a space or a punctuation mark it expands into "program". I have dozens of abbreviations, which are defined per mode.

4. I can open a shell in a separate window.

5. You can store text in registers and insert it, so it's like copying and pasting with the mouse, except you can save multiple blocks of text.

6. The rectangle editing feature is very nice. That is, you can manipulate rectangular blocks within a text. That's handy for indentation, but also for other things.

Emacs has lots of other features, many of which I don't use, some which I may well use someday.

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: Mr Red
Date: 13 Jun 22 - 02:07 AM

Thanx Guys.

I have Notepad++ because it is available as a portable version. And have written HTML, JavaScript & JSON with it. Sometime HTML is written via JavaScript because the results come from computations eg Grid Refs to Benchmarks nearby. Serverside is not my forté.

Vim Portable is available. And portability is a strong criterion.

Dreamweaver has been used for years, and it does help having the language tools in the app instead of my head. But my experience with Pagemaker - to InDesign and Premiere to CS4 warns me that Adobe don't do backward compatibility and progressive evolution in any way conducive to purchase. Everything changes, so the choices open-up to "it's all gonna be a learning curve, whatever". Dreamweaver has changed a lot, I see, & I don't do monthly subscriptions.

BTW there is a version of Word & Excel 365 that can be purchased. But not the whole Office suite. I found Libre Office (when Open Office) couldn't handle one essential VBA op even with a workaround.

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: Mr Red
Date: 13 Jun 22 - 02:34 AM

I have done a bit of searching and one quote caught my eye:

Why is Vim such a boring text editor that does not come with games like what Emacs has?

Hmmm. I never play games on my PC, well: wordplay, puns, jokes (discuss!), banter and opinion. But never games. Sort of helps the decision making. And I still have Notepad++ Portable.

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 13 Jun 22 - 02:41 AM

"Serverside is not my forté."

I've had very good experiences with FastCGI. My server-side programs were in C++.

I may have to learn PHP for the websites I've set up in webspace rented from GMX. This is my website with links to my others. There shouldn't be an JavaScript in them. One is a GNU website and JavaScript is anathema on GNU websites (and they just hate nathemas). No server-side applications, either. I only used that for a dead project I programmed for the wastepaper basket for a job (public sector, of course). It is cryogenically preserved at GitHub, so I could dig out the FastCGI code if you're interested.

I posted the link because it's all hand-written HTML code, unsullied by any CMS or IDE.

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 13 Jun 22 - 02:43 AM

I don't do Adobe subscriptions either. This is the last CD version of the software before they held it all hostage with subscription only access. You can't touch these old disks on the resale sites (eBay, for example) for the prices they ask. They are priceless.

That backward compatibility was something you could get around, but it had to do with the global settings.

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 13 Jun 22 - 03:17 AM

This is the project for which I used FastCGI: gwrdifpk

It's a client-server application. FastCGI is really simple and I like programming in C or C++ and have never felt like learning PHP or Perl, although I have nothing against them. I hate Java just about as much as I do IDEs.

It also uses a MySQL database, which I access using the MySQL's C interface. I always use C interfaces in preference to C++ interfaces.

This program may have been written for the wastepaper basket, but I learned and used several interesting techniques for it. It also uses cryptography and GnuTLS with X.509 certificates. So, the German taxpayers paid for me to learn lots of interesting things.

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 13 Jun 22 - 04:18 AM

"There shouldn't be an[y] JavaScript in them."

There shouldn't be, but there is: Rotating Sphere.

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: Mr Red
Date: 15 Jun 22 - 05:55 PM

Has anyone ever looked inside Fakebook. OK they must have Terabytes of PHP &/or bespoke other software, but they still feel the need to bloat your page with 180 JavaScript files. All loaded with crap to obfuscate reverse engineering. And 180 is without addons for Fakebook.

Now why would Fakebook do that? Could it be a prime example of distributed computing? A billion users would require a humongous allocation of resources when you could off-load to the billion PCs sitting doing practically zilch most of the time.

Screen size, text size. Checking arrival & full rendering etc. Ya cain't do that server-side, only the PC you are looking at knows how slow, how big, how tied-up with other tasks it is, so JavaScript is your answer!

& I would bet Fakebook has some fancy encoding (eg images) that JavaScript unbundles to limit the size of transmitted packets.

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: DaveRo
Date: 16 Jun 22 - 02:55 AM

Facebook use React to generate webpages. It isn't 'written' in html in the way most people here would understand that; the servers don't send html to your browser, it's all javascript. Your browser generates the screen elements directly from the javascript.

It isn't 'obfuscated' in the usual sense of that word, that is deliberately obscured. It's highly compressed to reduce network traffic - names are converted to single letters and the javascript is 'minified' to remove spaces and comments. The effect is much the same!

It's the very devil to manipulate using userscripts and userstyles. For one thing the code is rarely the same (IDs, classes) from one moment to the next. Same with Twitter.

Most if not all really big websites work this way. And I assume the same React code is used to build their apps, which is why websites and apps often look identical.

Subject: RE: Tech: Vim editor - any experience??
From: Mr Red
Date: 16 Jun 22 - 04:17 AM

Thanx

I do some data extraction in Excel via IE11 and more recently a temporary browser extension because a lot of sites have moved on and IE11 hasn't. Bit like a fancy copy & paste.

But as you would imagine - it fails every so often because the sites I target have changed. eg Geograph.org.uk - a lovely site for seeing pics of a location. I can talk to the programmer if needed, it is pretty sophisticated but consistent internally.

FWIW I get Fakebook lock-ups and temporary obscure changes in presentation - which I put down to the broadband drop-outs up to 3 minutes (probably the BT CDN giving priority to higher paying customers - net nuetrality? A myth))