Notepad++

[Greg Erskine]

I found this article to be helpful. It explains how to link your pi to a windows computer, allowing you to use Notepad++ to edit your pi files. I have not tried yet (don't get my pi until tomorrow), but the process seems painless.

https://www.dexterindustries.com/BrickP ... nd-tricks/

Just tried with that plugin but there is no way to create a session as su.

Best method I have found is to use WinSCP and add Npp as your preferred editor in preferences then create two separate profiles, one for your pi user and one for su. You can then edit the su profile's advanced settings to include sudo su -c /usr/lib/sftp-server.

Hi fade2gray,

This is exactly how I do my RPi development thru my Windows PC. Love it! On my Windows laptop I just usually use, Notepad++ with NppFTP.

Also, I use WinSCP's synchronise to sync between RPi and git directory on PC. This process makes it nearly impossible to lose work.

I think knowing the basics commands of vi is essential though for when you get stuck.

regards
Greg

[bassamanator]

Using the Raspberry Pi is an opportunity to get out of your comfort zone. This is a good thing.

Not necessarily. It can be frustrating and disruptive when trying to be productive, having to battle tools to get the job one wants to do done. When that becomes annoying enough it can lead to the Raspberry Pi being abandoned.

It's not that unreasonable for people to want tools which they are familiar with to be available and working on all platforms, working in the same way. Text editors are a hugely important tool for most programmers so having to use different tools can be highly disruptive, particularly so with command line editors where how they work and command key sequences can be very different.

There is a reason I do most of my Pi development on a PC, why most of my apps have an '--update' option which downloads their latest version from that PC.

Getting out of one's comfort zone is always a good thing. It makes the mind more agile, makes one able to cope with a wider variety of situations.

If someone is trying to be productive, then they should stick to the environment that they are most productive in; there are no 'ifs', 'ands', and 'buts' here. If that someone has decided to try out a different environment, well then they accept that they cannot be as productive in this new environment; it would be silly to think otherwise. The path forward then is to make an honest attempt to try out the environment and use the tools that that environment provides.

No offense to OP. I myself tried to install Kate (certainly the best text editor in existence) on RpiOS. I decided against it because 154MB for a text editor is silly. And because I decided to get out of my comfort zone, I've become quite proficient in nano. It's made me a stronger user in general.

[Heater]

I myself tried to install Kate (certainly the best text editor in existence) on RpiOS.
I decided against it because 154MB for a text editor is silly.
And because I decided to get out of my comfort zone, I've become quite proficient in nano. It's made me a stronger user in general.

Those are probably the weirdest things I'm going to hear today. And I haven't had breakfast yet!

It's very unlikely Kate is the best text editor in existence.

Why worry about 154MB when we have SD cards so small I can't find them holding 64 thousand megabytes and tiny machines with thousands of megabytes of RAM?

Using nano is like painting a portrait with a very long brush poked through a the keyhole of a locked door with the canvas on the other side. Perhaps that makes one stronger at doing that trick but what is the point?

[jahboater]

It's very unlikely Kate is the best text editor in existence.

There is no one single "best" text editor.

Some editors are better than others at certain features and if those features happen to be important to the user, that that's the best choice.

In practice, the best editor is one you have written yourself, or modified to suit yourself (emacs), then it does exactly what you want.

[Zenith singh]

I guess you got no luck here, there is no such release in Linux Operating System. but the best part is Notepad++ unofficially available as a Snap package for Linux users

[Heater]

It's very unlikely Kate is the best text editor in existence.

There is no one single "best" text editor.

So we agree then.

In practice, the best editor is one you have written yourself,...

Ah, no. If I wrote an editor for myself it would be terrible

...or modified to suit yourself (emacs), then it does exactly what you want.

I often heard that some people do an awful lot of customization and configuration of their editors. Often emacs people.
Jon Gjengset has a two hour long video explaining his Vim setup for programming in Rust: "Desktop and editor setup for Rust development": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycMiMDHopNc&t=6496s. He has everything you expect from an IDE working in there, including Vim configs and such he has been collecting for years.

I'm not much into all that.

[Heater]

... the best part is Notepad++ unofficially available as a Snap package for Linux users

I presume that only works in Intel computers.

[bjtheone]

I strongly recommend exploring the text editor options available to the open source community. Notepad++ is a pretty good text editor for Windows, but in comparison to what we have for Linux it's actually kind of crappy.

Text editors are such an integral part of working with Linux, they receive a lot of attention from the developer community. The idea of Windows having a superior text editor is simply intolerable to most of us.

I am not sure of what you intended by this. As it could read that open source community is sufficiently motivated, such that they will always have better editors or that the same developers are vexed by the idea that MS has a better editor.

Sadly I don't agree with the former thought. The open source community has many brilliant designers. However they tend to have strong opinions of "the one true way things should work", and sometimes are less than receptive to requests that do not fit with this. They also are often writing tools for themselves or to solve their problem, which may or may not align with the unwashed masses problems.

A large very well funded commercial organization does not have these issues, since they can (a) afford the developers, (b) measure need and address it and tend to be very motivated by profit. More users equals more profit.

What is bizarre to me is that with all the advantages MS has that they do not completely own the tools space. I suspect that is mainly due to their arrogance in not embracing open standards, or going down the "embrace and extent (ie break and make proprietary).

I think the main difference with Linux is there is a richer range of editors from very simple to very complex. Plus they are available on most platforms, so you can invest the time to become skilled in a particular tool, and be able to use it. There certainly are many editors that and much better than notepad++, by a number of quantifiable metrics.

[Heater]

The open source community has many brilliant designers. However they tend to have strong opinions of "the one true way things should work", and sometimes are less than receptive to requests that do not fit with this. They also are often writing tools for themselves or to solve their problem, which may or may not align with the unwashed masses problems.

That is a great advantage of the Free and Open Source software worlds.

Talented developers have vision in mind. They follow the principles of their vision. That stops them throwing all kind of features that don't fit well and making big pile of poo out of their projects. Nobody says anyone else has to use it or care about it so all is well.

What is bizarre to me is that with all the advantages MS has that they do not completely own the tools space. I suspect that is mainly due to their arrogance in not embracing open standards, or going down the "embrace and extent (ie break and make proprietary).

As far as I recall MS pretty much did own the tool space for some time.

I see nothing bizarre about the fact that that has slipped away from them to a large extent.

Talented, skillful enthusiastic developers do not want to spend their life creating things that are dependent on tools from a single source of supply, from a profit motivated corporation which is often in a foreign country for them.

Slowly even commercial for profit organizations realized the advantages of not becoming dependent on specific, unique tools from a single supplier. It's like making you business dependent on someone else's business, giving them power over you, business minded people would mostly avoid that.

Over the decades I have been involved in a number of projects that involved salvaging a software wreckage when key proprietary libraries/tools/platforms disappeared. It's an expensive business that hits the bottom line badly.

Can you even imagine we would have some of the biggest companies in the world today, Google, Facebook etc if they had to depend on tools from MS. That would be bizarre. Of course they are built on Open Source, they collaborate together on Open Source and so on.

Even MS has belatedly realized this. Hence their big show of supporting Open Source. They want to attract people to their cloud services, that means making it attractive to all those skilled Open Source developers.

My favorite outcome of all this is MS Visual Studio code and the fact that all my favorite Linux software is usable on Windows 10.

[jamesh]

VSCode is great. Recently converted - not going back!

Runs on Windows, Ubuntu , Pi4 and is very good.

[bassamanator]

... Kate ... certainly the best text editor in existence ...

It's very unlikely Kate is the best text editor in existence.

You know when someone makes a statement like that, it's likely in jest.

Why worry about 154MB when we have SD cards so small I can't find them holding 64 thousand megabytes and tiny machines with thousands of megabytes of RAM?

I have 10TB of storage space (not counting old drives and thumb drives) in my apartment right now with about half being empty and I still don't have room for a 154MB text editor. If you would like to install your favorite text editor at the cost of 154MB, please be my guest.

...And because I decided to get out of my comfort zone, I've become quite proficient in nano. It's made me a stronger user in general.

Using nano is like painting a portrait with a very long brush poked through a the keyhole of a locked door with the canvas on the other side. Perhaps that makes one stronger at doing that trick but what is the point?

1. It's quite cumbersome to go to file, open, then browse to the location of the file you want to open and then open it. Now I just open and edit files on my rpi from the command line. It saves a lot of time. Give it a try sometime.
2. I decided to go headless with my rpi because I realized I didn't need a gui anymore. You learn a lot when working on a headless system.
3. The more time you spend on the command line, the more comfortable you become with it, and the more willing you are to try/install/tinker with things you wouldn't have before. This all makes you a stronger user.
4. Learning nano has made me realize that these kind of editors are absolutely fine. Because of my experience with nano, I'm now in the slow process of learning vim.
etc.

You should work on your imagination my friend, it's quite lacking. [Moderator, please no personal attacks!]

[Heater]

... Kate ... certainly the best text editor in existence ...

It's very unlikely Kate is the best text editor in existence.

You know when someone makes a statement like that, it's likely in jest.

Why worry about 154MB when we have SD cards so small I can't find them holding 64 thousand megabytes and tiny machines with thousands of megabytes of RAM?

I have 10TB of storage space (not counting old drives and thumb drives) in my apartment right now with about half being empty and I still don't have room for a 154MB text editor. If you would like to install your favorite text editor at the cost of 154MB, please be my guest.

...And because I decided to get out of my comfort zone, I've become quite proficient in nano. It's made me a stronger user in general.

Using nano is like painting a portrait with a very long brush poked through a the keyhole of a locked door with the canvas on the other side. Perhaps that makes one stronger at doing that trick but what is the point?

1. It's quite cumbersome to go to file, open, then browse to the location of the file you want to open and then open it. Now I just open and edit files on my rpi from the command line. It saves a lot of time. Give it a try sometime.
2. I decided to go headless with my rpi because I realized I didn't need a gui anymore. You learn a lot when working on a headless system.
3. The more time you spend on the command line, the more comfortable you become with it, and the more willing you are to try/install/tinker with things you wouldn't have before. This all makes you a stronger user.
4. Learning nano has made me realize that these kind of editors are absolutely fine. Because of my experience with nano, I'm now in the slow process of learning vim.
etc.

You should work on your imagination my friend, it's quite lacking.

What on earth are you talking about?

1. I have multiple terminals open all day everyday. Since about 1980. Can't live without the command line.

2. I have worked on headless, embedded systems since about 1980. Including designing and building a few. All my Pi are headless.

3. Quite strong enough thank you.

4. Good, when you have vim under your belt you will realize the meaning of what I said about nano.

[Moderator had to censor/remove a line here]

[jahboater]

4. Learning nano has made me realize that these kind of editors are absolutely fine. Because of my experience with nano, I'm now in the slow process of learning vim.

After you have learned vi, you should learn emacs.

Its not bi-modal like vi and using it is much like a conventional editor; although it is hugely powerful and more like an IDE.
However, the fun bit is that it is very easy to extend and customize. You just have to learn lisp.

[mahjongg]

Please stop the "which editor is best" war! Or victims will be made!

[lurk101]

Why do you think you need it? What's wrong with Leafpad or Mousepad?

One reason would be that I've been using it for the last 10 years and am not inclined to switch.

[Heater]

One reason would be that I've been using it for the last 10 years and am not inclined to switch.

Hmm...

I can well understand the desire to stay with what is familiar and comfortable.

But really, for such a simple thing as a simple text editor?

By that criteria I would refuse to drive any car today unless it was a Ford Anglia, like the one I learned to drive with forty years ago!

[jahboater]

I can well understand the desire to stay with what is familiar and comfortable.

But really, for such a simple thing as a simple text editor?

A reluctance to move to something complicated like vi is reasonable I guess, but changing to another *pad editor should be easy, just a few minutes to get familiar.

[Heater]

Exactly.

[hippy]

One reason would be that I've been using it for the last 10 years and am not inclined to switch.

Hmm...

I can well understand the desire to stay with what is familiar and comfortable.

But really, for such a simple thing as a simple text editor?

By that criteria I would refuse to drive any car today unless it was a Ford Anglia, like the one I learned to drive with forty years ago!

When I was regularly driving hire cars I had it specified that they only delivered those which had the indicator stalk on the side I was used to because some inadvertent mistakes can be deadly.

[Heater]

When I was regularly driving hire cars I had it specified that they only delivered those which had the indicator stalk on the side I was used to because some inadvertent mistakes can be deadly.

Interesting.

I spent a few years riding a Yamaha motorcycle on a "learners licence". When it came to the day of my motorcycle license test it turned out I could not use my Yamaha, because the road tax had not been paid (Eh, hmm), so I borrowed an old British BSA 250.

This was interesting because old British bikes had the brake and gear pedals swapped around, left to right, compared to the Japs. Not only that one pushed down to go up a gear on a British bike but up to go up a gear on the new Jap bikes.

Despite that chaos I passed the test and and an RAC proficiency test a few days later.

Now, the tricky thing is driving out of the UK and finding that everyone drives on the wrong side of the road!

And, whilst we are at it, I noticed that most drivers in California's busy traffic seem to use their indicators at random. If they use them at all!

Text editors, deadly? Give me a break.

[Greg Erskine]

VSCode is great. Recently converted - not going back!

Runs on Windows, Ubuntu , Pi4 and is very good.

Thanks James,

You prompted me to try Visual Studio Code again. So far it I could find the nice things Notepad++ could do, plus things like global replace on directories or workspace seem more flexible. Once I got the appropriate Extensions installed I was happy.

Just as a warning to others: I tried what I thought was Visual Studio Code a couple of weeks ago but it turned out to be Visual Studio 2017 which was a way more complicated environment than I needed.

I wish these pretty editors would understand what I mean when I type :wq

regards
Greg

[pidd]

I think linux has always suffered from the many who imply that "if you can't use vi, you aren't a proper linux programmer" and that is why we don't have a near equivalent of Notepad++. Noting that these people rarely use vi themselves!

Nano is ok-ish to use if you switch line numbering on and probably mouse support. I've been meaning to adjust the colours for white background (another linux no-no). After many year of green or orange on a black backgrounds it took me a long time to adjust to white backgrounds, I'm getting too old to change again.

[Heater]

I think linux has always suffered from the many who imply that "if you can't use vi, you aren't a proper linux programmer"

Nah.

That presumes Linux has suffered. It has not. It runs most of the worlds computing infra structure today. We even have the ever dreamed of "Linux on the desktop" thanks to Windows 10.

It also presume that who ever those "proper linux programmers" are all use vi. They don't. And that they say such things, I have never heard it.

...and that is why we don't have a near equivalent of Notepad++.

That presumes we don't have a near equivalent of Notepad++. The Linux/Free Software/Open Source Software worlds have produced hundreds of text editors. There are non-open source but free editors like Sublime which are fantastic.

I'm sure whatever Notepad++ has or does you can find in all of those.

Noting that these people rarely use vi themselves!

Seems unlikely to me.

[Aydan]

I've been very happy with JOE for the last few years. It's more powerful than nano, but far less complicated than emacs.
I'm even using it almost exclusively on my PC in a shell, even logged into a GUI session. :shrugs:

Aydan

[GlowInTheDark]

I think the mod(s) have already spoken:

No editor wars, folks!