AutoHotkey Community

[Ace_NoOne]

Hey guys,

I know the "favorite editor" issue has been discussed a couple of times already, but I still haven't really found a satisfactory answer so far.
Currently I'm using PSPad, and while it's certainly a great program, there's three things I don't like about it:

1. it's not lightweight (resource- and interface-wise)
2. it doesn't support collapsing code blocks (i.e. reducing the displaying of functions/subroutines to their headers)
3. it does not support hyperlinking (e.g. clicking on a function's name in the code will take you to its definition)

Is there any editor that would pass those criteria?

[PhiLho]

SciTE is close to that:

1) It is below 1MB (no UPX here).

2) It supports code block collapsing (block comments, continuation sections, and of course braces). Of course, you need my special SciLexer.dll, as it is not yet integrated to the official distribution (I should rework on the lexer).

3) Uh, not that. Well, there is a script to do that, isn't it? Note that SciTE supports kind of hyperlinking: #Include FooBar.ahk, put cursor on the file name, hit Ctrl+Shift+O, it opens the file. Same for URLs.
Note that I still think that function definitions are hard to find (distinguish from calls) in AHK.
But now we have regular expressions in AHK, perhaps I should write a script specific to SciTE (or generic if just parsing a text file) to list functions in a project.

The only point that can annoy users is the settings: it is powerful, but you have to tweak a text file, no fancy dialog, no auto-save.
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vPhiLho := RegExReplace("Philippe Lhoste", "^(\w{3})\w*\s+\b(\w{3})\w*$", "$1$2")

[Ace_NoOne]

I'm familiar with and quite fond of SciTE - in fact, I use it as a Notepad replacement for some tasks.
However, I never got AHK working in SciTE; while I don't mind the text settings, I didn't know how to do anything beyond changing the most basic settings.
So thanks for your link there, I'll definitely check that out!

The hyperlinking would definitely be a nice thing to have though...

[POINTS]

I'm using PSPad right now too and have the same problems. PSPad has A LOT of features but crashes a lot for me...

I think an editor should have these characteristics:
1) Not crash!
2) Open Source
3) Syntax highlighting
4) Ability to add your own java scripts to it
5) Line manipulation (such as add to the beginning of every line) and column select
6) Project files
7) Good Find/Replace functions

PSPad crashes and I don't think is open source but you can do all of the other things plus much more (even diff to files).

Scite looks good though. I'll give it a shot. Any other programs? Or is that the best one?
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[tekNerd]

Notepad++ ?
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http://sharpe-shell.org

[PhiLho]

Notepad++ is based on Scintilla, the source code editor component that is also used in SciTE (Scintilla-based Text Editor), which was initially a demonstration/testbed of the later...
So it will have automatically some goodies like code folding, column select, base regex.
Problem: it won't highlight correctly AHK code, unless you recompile it.
I think it can do base highlighting though.

POINTS, SciTE has indeed most of your... points. It never crashed on me. Well, it did, when I developped a new feature. Or if it did, I debugged it and corrected it. Stability is very important for the project owner and the developpers.

Item 4: No JavaScript scripting, but Lua, much lighter, very powerful, easy to learn. I will soon give here a script listing all AutoHotkey function definitions in the current buffer, I just wrote the same in AutoHotkey and the regexes are simple enough to be rewritten easily in Lua.
Item 6: SciTE is a pure text editor, no concept of project files. I don't miss that. Even less in AHK. Still, it is easy to open an included file.
Item 7: It is relatively complete here.
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vPhiLho := RegExReplace("Philippe Lhoste", "^(\w{3})\w*\s+\b(\w{3})\w*$", "$1$2")

[wtg]

My favorite is UltraEdit (www.ultraedit.com). It's not open source or freeware, but it's shareware and quite inexpensive - $39.95 US.

Functions aren't hyperlinked, but it displays your codes functions in a list box to the right of the editor and clicking on one instantly takes you too it, plus the list always highlights the function your cursor is in.

It does a lot of things very well and very fast: syntax highlight, code-folding, column-mode editing, integrated FTP, HTML toolbars, regular expressions, projects, templates, too much to list really. Here's a link to full feature list: http://www.ultraedit.com/index.php?name=UE_MoreFeatures

It's frequently updated - one new major release a year - and well supported. I've been using it about 7 years now.

[Mistrel]

My biggest gripe is not being able to list my scripts functions and subroutines. I find that I waste a lot of time hunting for them in my script.

[PhiLho]

List functions (+ labels + hotstuff) in an AutoHotkey script
I am rewriting it in Lua to use it directly in SciTE.

[EDIT 2006/11/25] Done! That's not really hyperlinking, but you get a kind of menu with the list of functions, labels and hotstuffs. Double-click on the item of your choice and you go there!
Well, I just think I can also make a hotkey to jump on the definition of the function call on which the caret is. Will work on this idea too.
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vPhiLho := RegExReplace("Philippe Lhoste", "^(\w{3})\w*\s+\b(\w{3})\w*$", "$1$2")

[MisterW]

Vim does all these.....but it might take a long time before you can

[urlwolf]

Agreed, Vim does that (hyperlinking).
But so does any editor with support for ctags (e.g., ultraedit, slickEdit, xemacs, multiedit2006).

We need to have ctags support for ahk, otherwise this is not possible.

Read about ctags here:
http://ctags.sourceforge.net/