There's little information about the GCB editor/IDE but it seems to be based on SynWrite (open source) which means that it can be cross-platform. Is there any reason why it's currently restricted to Windows?
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The SynWrite package is also being maintained in Lazarus+Free Pascal which is why I was surprised there was no cross-platform version because this version supports at the least the Windows, FreeBSD, Linux and macOS operating systems.
Is the source to the current GCB IDE available? If so, I'll look into it when I've finished my current project.
Last edit: Trev 2019-06-24
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I've been looking around at different editors, but didn't find anything even remotely as capable as Syn-Write. The authors new replacement editor is a joke in comparison. The big thing for me is the ease of changing the toolbar to contain new items totally defined by the user. I couldn't find anything else as capable. Also portability is a big concern for me. You can't deliver the editor with GCB and just copy it in place if it isn't portable.
Is it just the cross platform problem that is driving the search for a replacement?
Last edit: Jim giordano 2019-12-22
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The core issue is supportability. We have no support for SynWrite. So, we talk of changing to improve the useability and the bugs... but, they will not be fixed ever.
At some point a replacement will come along.
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Okay, I went back and looked at Cudatext again. Apparently I was all wrong in my first assesment. My sincerest appologies to the author for my "joke" comment above. It's just not readily apparent how to get things done. The base editor is not pleasant. For example when you go to options, you get a giant text list of stuff with no clue how to change anything. I discovered later that there is however Plugins available to do most everything, so for options, you have to go to Plugins/OptionsEditor. Still not great but better. One of the first things I looked for was how to add the GCB buttons to the toolbar. Again, there doesn't seem to be any way to do so. Then I stumbled upon something online which led me install another plugin, and now I can add new items to the toolbar.
I still dislike the options stuff. And I guess, looking at the source code, that giant programs using thousands of files aren't limited to C++ programmers. I would hate to maintain such a thing.
So overall, I guess Cudatext would be a viable cross platform option for the replacment. Do you know if Frank or someone is working on this?
Last edit: Jim giordano 2019-12-24
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There's a linux programming editor in linux that can be setup for gcb...like geany.
It just doesn't work out the box like win version does...I gave up :(
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It's pretty unlikely that any editor is going to work "out of the box" (ready to run, already compiled) on Linux in general because every distribution of Linux has its own ideas about what it should include (in the way of dependencies). Lately, various distributions have been removing many parts of the GTK graphics framework on which many pre-compiled GUI programs depend, in favour of the Qt graphics framework which is now the fashion. Then there's the various desktop environments and window managers, all with different and incompatible features even between versions of the same one.
FreeBSD suffers from some of these issues but in a much less dramatic way because there is a standard installation which only provides you with a number of consoles/terminals. No desktop environment and no window manager. You are free to install whichever you want, pre-compiled packages or from source code, and dependencies are taken care of automatically.
By contrast, Windows and macOS are very much known quantities where the expectation of an "out of the box" graphical installation of an application is easy to achieve for any version of the operating systems released in the last decade.
The only editor I know of which is actively maintained across almost every platform known to man is emacs which has both console/terminal and GUI versions. It is infinitely extensible; does email, web browsing, newsgroup reading; can easily compile any source code for any language; can be easily modified to do syntax highlighting for any language (I've done it for Great Cow BASIC - see forum posts). Adding menu items is trivial (I've done it). Adding toolbar buttons may well be easy, but I have not done it myself. I use it for C, Pascal, shell scripts, HTML, XML and Great Cow BASIC on FreeBSD, Linux (Ubuntu), macOS and Windows.
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I looked into Notepad++ as it is my favorate Windows Editor, but the developer has repeatedly refused to develop it for Linux.
There is a Notepad++ snap package that uses an embedded Wine on Ubuntu that helps it run on Linux but it is still the windows app. We could do the same with Syn@Write but is not along term solution.
Last edit: Chris Roper 2019-12-25
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And has been actively maintained by others since 1976 :-)
It's also available in every Linux repository, FreeBSD's ports system and is a single file download for Windows and macOS.
Customisation, in terms of what we're discussing, generally depends on adding/editing a single ".emacs" configuration file for menus and F-key (re-)definitions (for compiling etc with an info/errors display buffer) and a single file "gcbasic.el" for syntax highlighting. So two small text files to distribute.
It also has the advantage that it can be used equally by modern moseketeers as well as old-school keyboarders. For example: CTRL-X, CTRL-S to save a file or mouse click File menu > Save.
While it's officially described as an "editor" it's really more of an "IDE" with a host of built-in functions (editor, email client, web browser, calculator, how to use tutorial, help etc etc) that most will probably never use (shades of MS Word :-).
People might dismiss it as "too complex", but I converted almost an entire editorial department of ~80 authors and authors' assistants at a commercial legal publisher to using emacs in Windows. Most had previously used Word when we transitioned from camera-ready, typeset paper pages stuck on wax boards to SGML files for digital content production.
It undoubtedly helped that I had management support and that, as an author myself, I had introduced PCs into the department to replace typrwriters and then supported them until an IT department was resurrected from the ashes of the Data Processing department two years later. The heady days of the 1980s and 90s when you either embraced change or became a dedicated dinosaur heading for analog extinction ;-)
I'm not sure how you'd engineer that sort of buy-in among here unless it was the lure that noone needed to maintain the software, just a couple of configuration files.
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I have never used a mac so can not comment.
GCB on linux is easy if you are a competent user...otherwise it's not! imho.
I just use notepad++ as a text viewer...not as an ide for gcb.
I can use gcb under linux from a terminal but it's nearly 2020.
What is easy for some people is difficult for others.
As I posted, you can use unsigned drivers so why so much effort into getting pickit2 and 3 signed?
Meanwhile I'll stick to using gcb on an old win 7 laptop.
It's about writing micro controller code...not getting gcb to work!
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I just got cudatext working on linux mint. I'm not a linux user so I stumbled a LOT getting the python interface to work. We'd have to do a different setup for each distro (or better a smart program to set the user config properly by distro). But otherwise it seems to work. And I also have no idea about using on a mac.
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Well done sir. That is another problem...I don't understand python. It is used a lot in linux...eg raspberry pi.
I can use a washing machine...and can fix it if it stops working!...but I use it mainly as a washine mashine :)
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So I've tried out every cross platform editor/IDE I can find, mostly from sites touting the top 25 best editors of 2019 and stuff like that. I haven't found a single one that seems viable. Most of the top contenders don't have a toolbar (Atom, Brackets) or have no facility to add a users entry to the toolbar (Geany). This is not the only problem, but it's an easy criteria to use. (I assume we all would want a customizable toolbar with our favorites present.)
I hate the way cudatext does its configuration files. Totally non-sensical to me. I can't figure out how to do a simple change like changing the color of comments from gray to green. But otherwise I'd say it was the top contender. It's relatively small (30 mb vs 485 mb for atom) and has everything else except easy customization. Herr Steinberg figured out this stuff for syn-write so it's not undoable. I'm just not up to the task at the moment. Also, I haven't been able to register with the cudatext forum so I can't even ask questions.
If it wasn't for the cross platform issue, this would be easy. I'm willing to help out any way I can, but at this point I'm at a loss as to which direction to go.
How does everyone feel about the issue. Do we want to pursue finding a replacement?
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Jim, thank you for your report back. I will post my full feedback shortly. I will try to explain the process we need to go through and the timelines.
Currently, upgrading all computers to Win10 before the Microsoft cutoff date for free licenses expires. I am currently mid the main development computer.... third attempt... 27% complete. Hence, I will reply later.
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The update never worked for me...just broke my pc so had to reinstall win 7.
I bought used pc with win 10 pro and an i5 and 8G ddr3 and some other mini mem card ssd?
ITB HD which I cloned to 240G ssd and added radeon hd6450 3d graphics card. About £93 in total. Getting 200 fps on assault cube.
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There's little information about the GCB editor/IDE but it seems to be based on SynWrite (open source) which means that it can be cross-platform. Is there any reason why it's currently restricted to Windows?
The Synwrite app is out of support. There is no development program.
It is Open Source code?
Yes.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/synwrite/
32bit source there? or, could we use the 64bit source and cross compile?
SynWrite.exe - Installer, program only.
SynWrite.zip - Zipped package, program and Total Commander plugin.
Both packages contain binaries + sources.
OK. Not something I ever looked at. SynWrite was build by Frank.
We have a cut down version, and, then, that is hacked to remove stuff we dont need.
I have not compiled or tested the source. And, the developer has moved on to CudaText which is cross platform.
The SynWrite package is also being maintained in Lazarus+Free Pascal which is why I was surprised there was no cross-platform version because this version supports at the least the Windows, FreeBSD, Linux and macOS operating systems.
Is the source to the current GCB IDE available? If so, I'll look into it when I've finished my current project.
Last edit: Trev 2019-06-24
There is no GCB source. Frank took a distrution and then that syn.exe was then used in the GCB distribution.
The UI was modified to remove menu options only. To my knowledge no source was available.
I've been looking around at different editors, but didn't find anything even remotely as capable as Syn-Write. The authors new replacement editor is a joke in comparison. The big thing for me is the ease of changing the toolbar to contain new items totally defined by the user. I couldn't find anything else as capable. Also portability is a big concern for me. You can't deliver the editor with GCB and just copy it in place if it isn't portable.
Is it just the cross platform problem that is driving the search for a replacement?
Last edit: Jim giordano 2019-12-22
The core issue is supportability. We have no support for SynWrite. So, we talk of changing to improve the useability and the bugs... but, they will not be fixed ever.
At some point a replacement will come along.
Okay, I went back and looked at Cudatext again. Apparently I was all wrong in my first assesment. My sincerest appologies to the author for my "joke" comment above. It's just not readily apparent how to get things done. The base editor is not pleasant. For example when you go to options, you get a giant text list of stuff with no clue how to change anything. I discovered later that there is however Plugins available to do most everything, so for options, you have to go to Plugins/OptionsEditor. Still not great but better. One of the first things I looked for was how to add the GCB buttons to the toolbar. Again, there doesn't seem to be any way to do so. Then I stumbled upon something online which led me install another plugin, and now I can add new items to the toolbar.
I still dislike the options stuff. And I guess, looking at the source code, that giant programs using thousands of files aren't limited to C++ programmers. I would hate to maintain such a thing.
So overall, I guess Cudatext would be a viable cross platform option for the replacment. Do you know if Frank or someone is working on this?
Last edit: Jim giordano 2019-12-24
The win gcb ide is not supported in linux which makes it too difficult to use. imho
So are you saying that syn-write doesn't work in linux?
Cudatext is supposed to be cross platform, does it work okay in linux?
There's a linux programming editor in linux that can be setup for gcb...like geany.
It just doesn't work out the box like win version does...I gave up :(
It's pretty unlikely that any editor is going to work "out of the box" (ready to run, already compiled) on Linux in general because every distribution of Linux has its own ideas about what it should include (in the way of dependencies). Lately, various distributions have been removing many parts of the GTK graphics framework on which many pre-compiled GUI programs depend, in favour of the Qt graphics framework which is now the fashion. Then there's the various desktop environments and window managers, all with different and incompatible features even between versions of the same one.
FreeBSD suffers from some of these issues but in a much less dramatic way because there is a standard installation which only provides you with a number of consoles/terminals. No desktop environment and no window manager. You are free to install whichever you want, pre-compiled packages or from source code, and dependencies are taken care of automatically.
By contrast, Windows and macOS are very much known quantities where the expectation of an "out of the box" graphical installation of an application is easy to achieve for any version of the operating systems released in the last decade.
The only editor I know of which is actively maintained across almost every platform known to man is emacs which has both console/terminal and GUI versions. It is infinitely extensible; does email, web browsing, newsgroup reading; can easily compile any source code for any language; can be easily modified to do syntax highlighting for any language (I've done it for Great Cow BASIC - see forum posts). Adding menu items is trivial (I've done it). Adding toolbar buttons may well be easy, but I have not done it myself. I use it for C, Pascal, shell scripts, HTML, XML and Great Cow BASIC on FreeBSD, Linux (Ubuntu), macOS and Windows.
I have not kept up with what is out there and still current. Notepad++, NetBeans, Geany, Bluefish, and others.
The hard part is selecting the right one, and then finding someone with the time and expertise to set it up as a GCB IDE.
I imagine this would take 6 months to a year with a focused effort. Probably not a 1 man project
Bill
I looked into Notepad++ as it is my favorate Windows Editor, but the developer has repeatedly refused to develop it for Linux.
There is a Notepad++ snap package that uses an embedded Wine on Ubuntu that helps it run on Linux but it is still the windows app. We could do the same with Syn@Write but is not along term solution.
Last edit: Chris Roper 2019-12-25
I just tried out emacs. What a beast! 25,301 files, certainly not something we would want to distribute. At least its portable :)
And has been actively maintained by others since 1976 :-)
It's also available in every Linux repository, FreeBSD's ports system and is a single file download for Windows and macOS.
Customisation, in terms of what we're discussing, generally depends on adding/editing a single ".emacs" configuration file for menus and F-key (re-)definitions (for compiling etc with an info/errors display buffer) and a single file "gcbasic.el" for syntax highlighting. So two small text files to distribute.
It also has the advantage that it can be used equally by modern moseketeers as well as old-school keyboarders. For example: CTRL-X, CTRL-S to save a file or mouse click File menu > Save.
While it's officially described as an "editor" it's really more of an "IDE" with a host of built-in functions (editor, email client, web browser, calculator, how to use tutorial, help etc etc) that most will probably never use (shades of MS Word :-).
People might dismiss it as "too complex", but I converted almost an entire editorial department of ~80 authors and authors' assistants at a commercial legal publisher to using emacs in Windows. Most had previously used Word when we transitioned from camera-ready, typeset paper pages stuck on wax boards to SGML files for digital content production.
It undoubtedly helped that I had management support and that, as an author myself, I had introduced PCs into the department to replace typrwriters and then supported them until an IT department was resurrected from the ashes of the Data Processing department two years later. The heady days of the 1980s and 90s when you either embraced change or became a dedicated dinosaur heading for analog extinction ;-)
I'm not sure how you'd engineer that sort of buy-in among here unless it was the lure that noone needed to maintain the software, just a couple of configuration files.
I have never used a mac so can not comment.
GCB on linux is easy if you are a competent user...otherwise it's not! imho.
I just use notepad++ as a text viewer...not as an ide for gcb.
I can use gcb under linux from a terminal but it's nearly 2020.
What is easy for some people is difficult for others.
As I posted, you can use unsigned drivers so why so much effort into getting pickit2 and 3 signed?
Meanwhile I'll stick to using gcb on an old win 7 laptop.
It's about writing micro controller code...not getting gcb to work!
I just got cudatext working on linux mint. I'm not a linux user so I stumbled a LOT getting the python interface to work. We'd have to do a different setup for each distro (or better a smart program to set the user config properly by distro). But otherwise it seems to work. And I also have no idea about using on a mac.
Well done sir. That is another problem...I don't understand python. It is used a lot in linux...eg raspberry pi.
I can use a washing machine...and can fix it if it stops working!...but I use it mainly as a washine mashine :)
So I've tried out every cross platform editor/IDE I can find, mostly from sites touting the top 25 best editors of 2019 and stuff like that. I haven't found a single one that seems viable. Most of the top contenders don't have a toolbar (Atom, Brackets) or have no facility to add a users entry to the toolbar (Geany). This is not the only problem, but it's an easy criteria to use. (I assume we all would want a customizable toolbar with our favorites present.)
I hate the way cudatext does its configuration files. Totally non-sensical to me. I can't figure out how to do a simple change like changing the color of comments from gray to green. But otherwise I'd say it was the top contender. It's relatively small (30 mb vs 485 mb for atom) and has everything else except easy customization. Herr Steinberg figured out this stuff for syn-write so it's not undoable. I'm just not up to the task at the moment. Also, I haven't been able to register with the cudatext forum so I can't even ask questions.
If it wasn't for the cross platform issue, this would be easy. I'm willing to help out any way I can, but at this point I'm at a loss as to which direction to go.
How does everyone feel about the issue. Do we want to pursue finding a replacement?
Jim, thank you for your report back. I will post my full feedback shortly. I will try to explain the process we need to go through and the timelines.
Currently, upgrading all computers to Win10 before the Microsoft cutoff date for free licenses expires. I am currently mid the main development computer.... third attempt... 27% complete. Hence, I will reply later.
The update never worked for me...just broke my pc so had to reinstall win 7.
I bought used pc with win 10 pro and an i5 and 8G ddr3 and some other mini mem card ssd?
ITB HD which I cloned to 240G ssd and added radeon hd6450 3d graphics card. About £93 in total. Getting 200 fps on assault cube.