Best authoring tool

in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Del Ferguson wrote:

"Lauri Raittila" <lauri (AT) raittila (DOT) cjb.net> wrote:
Emacs.

[pleace don't quote sigs, and snip extra attributions]

Reminds me of my UNIX days in 1984.

Emacs in 1984 was not as good as it is today. Especially HTML stuff,
reason should be obvious..

Anyway, I have only used emacs for 3 years.

Might as well tell people to port in the "vi" editor to their system.

Usually no need for porting, I believe some version of vi is available to
almost as many platforms as emacs.

Far easier to use than the "emacs" editor.

But for person used to windows software, I think both are hard to
learn... I don't think vi(m) has more features than usual good GUI text
editors. I don't know vim much though. (please, follow-ups for emacs vs.
vi debate to dev/null.)

Anyway, I suggested Emacs because it is flexible, and OP asked for
flexible. Is there anything that comes even close?

With emacs, you can easily change everythng, including remapping all keys
like letters and punctuation. Some people would think it is not necessary
to be able to redefine any key on fly. Those people have never used 101
button Finnish keyboard layout for writing HTML. (to curious, that layout
has no key for neither < nor >. With emacs, this was easy to solve, even
if I had no admistrative right of that computer... of course I was
running emacs on server using java based SSH as well. This is also not
possible with most "modern" text editors.)

Time to learn everything in emacs is most likely equal to infinity (and
makes no sence), but it is not too hard to learn, if you have time to use
for learning one feature at time. Good thing is that limits of editor are
quite far, so you can learn the most important stuff first. And of
course, most important stuff is different for everybody. Some of the most
useful things for me have not been in any other editor I have tried...

1. Ability to run it from any computer, and continue where I was
(actually possible for every text mode editor running on unix)
2. Multible views to same document
3. interactive RegEx replace on multible files (files selectable by
regexp) (using external library)
4. Moving in document is powerful, and context avare (e.g. sentence
forward)
5. Configuration is easy to move between machines/users/platforms

Most of the other stuff I have found in some other editors, but usually
something is missing...

--
Lauri Raittila <http://www.iki.fi/lr> <http://www.iki.fi/zwak/fonts>
Utrecht, NL.
Support me, buy Opera:
https://secure.bmtmicro.com/opera/bu...tml?AID=882173

On Wed, 6 Apr 2005 08:18:56 -0700, "Del Ferguson"
<delandshar (AT) charter (DOT) net> wrote:

[...]

I guess I'll have to be like Simon Cowell of American Idol fame and say that
VIM is just OK. My personal opinion only and not to say that someone else
wouldn't like it. If I "really" want to use VI again, I still have an old,
old copy of MKS Tools VI on my PC. Granted, it is DOS-based, but it
satisfies any cravings for my previous life and is sometimes quicker for
smaller projects. I still have my old VI User's Handbook near the PC. I
guess that if I really wanted to go that route again, I'd dump Microsoft
Windows and go to LINUX, but I won't. I'm one of those few that actually
like Microsoft. Although, starting to get dated, NoteTab Pro seems to be
the best for my HTML coding. With HTML, XHTML, CSS, Tidy and Validation
libraries, it gets the job done. I've tried most of the other "pad-type"
programs and they just didn't live up to my expectations. Anything else has
too many bells and whistles that I don't really need--and their cost would
bend my pension.

Please Del, would it be possible to find it in your heart, a willingness
to break up your post into comprehensible bits and pieces.

That block of "noise" you posted is not a usable piece of text

--
Rex

DM <spampit (AT) devnu11 (DOT) com> wrote

But if you're going
to be spending hours and hours working on a website, I'd recommend Dreamweaver
MX. It has some flaws, I admit, but it provides the HTML and CSS features to
support serious Web development.

Yes, that's what I also wanted to point out. There's a difference
between a code editor and a site manager. All the editors here only
do the code thing, but do not (as far as I know) help you manage the
site. And when you have hundreds of pages, such a tool comes in handy
! I find Dreamweaver great in that respect.

cheers,
Patrick.

JRS: In article <8ZX3e.25923$Nr5.17706 (AT) fe2 (DOT) news.blueyonder.co.uk>,
dated Sun, 3 Apr 2005 20:02:12, seen in news:comp.infosystems.www.author
ing.html, Trammel <Me (AT) Server (DOT) com> posted :

I'd go with Notepad though... using PHP-include modules for any function /
information that might be duplicated.

If you put everything in its own named include file then call them from your
.php file in the right order - I find it quite easy to do large-scale
projects in Notepad

Don't top-post or over-quote.

Using only Notepad is silly - because there are many better plain-text
editors readily available, some being free. I use PFE, although alas
its development has stopped; it has only one missing feature that I
regret, and I can use another editor (generally the BP7 IDE) when I need
that.

Unless, of course, later Notepad is *very* much better than the version
I have.

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v4.00 IE 4 ©
<URL:http://www.jibbering.com/faq/> JL/RC: FAQ of news:comp.lang.javascript
<URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/js-index.htm> jscr maths, dates, sources.
<URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> TP/BP/Delphi/jscr/&c, FAQ items, links.

"Jan Roland Eriksson" <jrexon (AT) newsguy (DOT) com> wrote

On Wed, 6 Apr 2005 08:18:56 -0700, "Del Ferguson"
delandshar (AT) charter (DOT) net> wrote:

[...]

I guess I'll have to be like Simon Cowell of American Idol fame
and say that
VIM is just OK. My personal opinion only and not to say that
someone else
wouldn't like it. If I "really" want to use VI again, I still
have an old,
old copy of MKS Tools VI on my PC. Granted, it is DOS-based, but
it
satisfies any cravings for my previous life and is sometimes
quicker for
smaller projects. I still have my old VI User's Handbook near
the PC. I
guess that if I really wanted to go that route again, I'd dump
Microsoft
Windows and go to LINUX, but I won't. I'm one of those few that
actually
like Microsoft. Although, starting to get dated, NoteTab Pro
seems to be
the best for my HTML coding. With HTML, XHTML, CSS, Tidy and
Validation
libraries, it gets the job done. I've tried most of the other
"pad-type"
programs and they just didn't live up to my expectations.
Anything else has
too many bells and whistles that I don't really need--and their
cost would
bend my pension.

Please Del, would it be possible to find it in your heart, a
willingness
to break up your post into comprehensible bits and pieces.

That block of "noise" you posted is not a usable piece of text

--
Rex

Rex,

I think my "block of noise" got lost in translation. Sometimes a
particular mail reader causes confusion. Lauri apparently
understood my comments, so I'll just pass on anything further.
I'll have to read the FAQs about snips and quotes, though. Cheers.

Del Ferguson

in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Del Ferguson wrote:

I think my "block of noise" got lost in translation.

No, I don't think so.

Sometimes a
particular mail reader causes confusion.

Yes, it is usually google groups beta, but OE is the very second.

Lauri apparently understood my comments,

I never read the reply with block of noise.

I'll have to read the FAQs about snips and quotes, though. Cheers.

Good. I usually killfile people that make 3 bad posts, but maybe I delay
that a bit... Here is one resource:
http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html

--
Lauri Raittila <http://www.iki.fi/lr> <http://www.iki.fi/zwak/fonts>
Utrecht, NL.
Support me, buy Opera:
https://secure.bmtmicro.com/opera/bu...tml?AID=882173

"Lauri Raittila" <lauri (AT) raittila (DOT) cjb.net> wrote

in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Del Ferguson wrote:

I'll have to read the FAQs about snips and quotes...

Good. I usually killfile people that make 3 bad posts, but maybe
I delay
that a bit... Here is one resource:
http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html

Read and understand.

Roman wrote:

I'm wondering which authoring tool would be most flexible and useful
for large websites using only html, css and javascrip.

Editor:
PSPad
http://www.pspad.com/

After trying: Notepad2; Programmers Notepad; ConText; Hapedit; TSW Webpad;
SciTe ...
I recommend pspad"
1. Freeware.
2. Syntax Highlighting.
3. The most complete editing functions (eg "Remove email quoting", Swap
lines, block select, ...)
4. Excellent "Tool Panel": navigation for files; Code walker.
5. Allows multiple documents. "Tab browsing". You can middle click on the
tab to close the document (I feature I really wanted).

TSW webpad second place.

Storing code snippets (Although pspad already has a library of customizable
code snipets):
ArsClip
http://www.joejoesoft.com/ac.php
1. Donationware.
2. Stores code snippets that become available regardless of which editor you
are using. (it runs in the taskbar)
3. Stores last 10 copies so you can easily paste any of these.

FTP:
Filezilla
http://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla
1. A straightforward FTP client that seems to provide everything you need.

EditPlus.

http://www.editplus.com

Excellent.

Mason C (no connection with EditPlus)

I'm wondering which authoring tool would be most flexible and
useful for large websites using only html, css and javascript.


Editor: PSPad
http://www.pspad.com/

Zeus for Windows

http://www.zeusedit.com/features.html

Zeus has features like project/workspace, syntax highlighting,
macro scripting (zeus is fully scriptable using java script),
integrated version control etc.

You can even check HTML files for W3C conformance from within
the editor, by makeing use of the Tidy HTML utility:

http://www.zeusedit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=194

FTP: Filezilla

Zeus has built-in seamless FTP/SFTP editing.

Note: Zeus is shareware (45 day trial).

Jussi Jumppanen
Author: Zeus for Windows