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Re: [LUG] HTML editors. was:Windows animosity.



>>I've yet to find a WYSIWYG
HTML authoring package I like.
<<

I second that. I've yet to find a WYSIWYG ANYTHING that I like! 
Pet hates:
GUI database access. (WHY!!??)
HTML email. (ditto).
MS Word
MS Excel
MS Office
Emacs :-) (Now, now, let's not start another flame war over that one!)
Netscape 6.0
Internet Explorer 3 (yes, it is still around! Many pharmacies still run Win95 
unaltered!)
Outlook
Outlook Express (although I still prefer it to any other Windows email 
client.)


> What do you think of Amaya? It produces nice clean code in "official"
> HTML, <\p> and all.

Did you mean <\p> Keith or </p> !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:-)))

Actually, Amaya is a terrible editor to actually handle for large sites. It 
is clunky, awkward, idiosyncratic, all the things that you claim about VI.

It also gets into knots when trying to use XHTML, XML, WML, PHP etc. which I 
use almost exclusively now. I haven't written plain HTML for >12 months. I 
want one editor that will cope with ALL text formats, including Perl. Once 
that comes into the choice, colour highlighting is essential. Amaya isn't 
even particularly helpful with Javascript!

To write valid HTML, it's better to use one of the online validator engines 
(see the W3C site).

I use LiquidFX on windows, although only for the syntax highlighting, and 
Quanta on Linux. Quanta is particularly good for large sites as you can 
display the list of files at the same time and opening files is much easier 
than using a standard File-Open dialog. Now that Linux is becoming the OS I 
boot in preference to Windows for website work, Quanta is really showing it's 
power. 

And yes, I do use VI. Let's face facts, a console text editor is essential - 
after all, how on EARTH do you expect to fix problems on a live dynamic web 
site without being able to edit via Telnet? There's no X server available 
then! And is <ESC>:q that hard to remember? (or <ESC>:wq if you've changed 
something.) Changing it on your machine in Amaya or FrontPage (sorry, I'll 
stop swearing) and using FTP is hardly much use when you need to change <\p> 
to </p> !!!

Currently, neither LiquidFX or Quanta pretend to be WYSIWYG, they delegate 
that task to a chosen browser, which is by FAR the most sensible option.

I have written my own HTML editor (available from the programs link on the 
codehelp site for Windows only) but it uses a fixed font , not a proportional 
one, so it isn't easy to read sometimes.  The project has been left to seed a 
little too long now, although it's useful as a demo on C++ (which is it's 
real purpose on the site).

-- 

Neil Williams
#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#
linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
neil@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
neil@xxxxxxxxxxxx
www.codehelp.co.uk

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