Re: [PyCrust] PyAlaMode

[Fernando P. <fp...@co...>]

Patrick K. O'Brien wrote:
[snip]

> Like PyCrust, PyAlaMode has a modular design and is both a library of
> components that you can use in your own programs as well as a set of
> standalone applications.  Now that I've started this thing, I'd like
> it to become the best Python source code editor of all (even though
> I'm partial to Emacs).  If you've got suggestions or would like to
> help, please let me know.

This sounds great.  But as much as I'd like to, so far I've been unable to 
stop using Xemacs.  I've tried a bunch of 'new' editors and keep coming back 
to Xemacs because some basic _editing_ features that make 'real life' coding 
efficient are missing from most other tools out there.

So here's my _personal_ laundry list of things any editor needs to fill out to 
compete with (X)Emacs:

- Fully configurable keyboard bindings.  This one is an absolute requirement 
for me.  If I can't set a  tool to use exactly my bindings (so I can 
uniformize them across tools), I won't use it. Period.

- Fast keyboard-based opening of files and buffers with tab-completion. 
Graphical dialogs are great, but when I know where things are in my directory 
structure, it is far more efficient just to type names in the minibuffer.

- Minibuffer for functional control of the editor.  Emacs, jed and lyx (my 3 
favorite text editing tools) all have this, and I find it essential for real 
life work.

- Incremental search like in Emacs, with instant highlighting of all 
occurrences in the current page.

- Regexp search/replace without graphical dialogs (again, that minibuffer thingy).

- Multiple windows open with the same list of underlying buffers.  This allows 
me to view two parts of the same file.

- Split one window in two or more parts (vertically/horizontally) showing the 
same buffer or different ones.

- Grep/diff support (emacs' ediff mode is incredibly useful when doing 
complicated code merges, for example).

- ChangeLog support built into the editor.  When I fix code, all I need to do 
is type C-x-4-a and I get my changelog entry pre-made with all the relevant 
info.  This is a huge time-saver which I need every day.

- Code indent/dedent features and code commenting/uncommenting for blocks. 
Since python doesn't have multi-line comments, emacs' ability to 
comment/uncomment a large section with one command is extremely useful.

- Syntax highlighting for many languages.  I don't want to think in terms of 
'python editor', 'C editor', 'shell script editor', etc.  They are all text 
files, and I want to edit them all, with proper color highlighting and 
auto-indenting, in one single tool.


So there it is :)

I know that you are just announcing an early pre-release (well, CVS), so I 
understand that some of this things are probably nowhere close yet.  But I've 
just seen too many 'new editor' projects come out which, while promising, end 
up just feeling like toys for real work.

I'd love to have a modern editor with a good graphical toolkit (Xemacs is 
horrible there) and robust python support.  So I truly wish you success with 
this, and I'll  be the first to use it.  But for that unfortunately it will 
have to meet a relatively stiff standard for me, because I need the tool to 
help me deal productively and quickly with large codebases.

So I hope this project does indeed succeed, because having a well integrated 
python environment with editing/ python shell interaction would be fantastic.
Best of luck!

Cheers,

f.