[OT] Which IDE / Editor do you use?

Adam D. Ruppe destructionator at gmail.com
Mon Sep 16 07:24:20 PDT 2013


On Sun, Sep 15, 2013 at 08:47:32PM -0700, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> - Its default escape sequence is extremely annoying (ctrl-A clashes with
>   bash's go-to-beginning-of-line, which I use literally *all* the time).
>   Switching it to something like ctrl-U makes it more tolerable.

I never really got into using C-a for start of line. I just use
the home key. (I prefer the arrows to hjkl too!)

> - It doesn't seem to pick up terminal settings correctly sometimes.
>   Which results in needing to set $TERM manually, or type
>   `TERM=rxvt-unicode program args`, instead of just `program args`.
>   Quite annoying.

Yeah, I've had trouble with this too and got around it by messing
with .rc files. My .vimrc


if $TERM=='screen'
  set ttymouse=xterm
endif

for example. (There's more $TERM hacks in there too.)


I also changed the escape when puttying in to C-s. The main reason is the laptop's
keyboard is laid out differently, so the same finger position for C-a on the desktop
hits s on the laptop.

But a second nice benefit is I can nest screens: use the C-s to switch top level ones
and then screen -d -r my project screens, and C-a them. Pretty boss.


My putty shortcut on the laptop also runs screen -S -something laptop, thus creating
a screen if needed and reattaching if it is already present.

So whenever I open that putty window, it goes right back to where I was... and of course,
screen -r laptop works on the desktop too if I forget to handle something.

Really convenient, and works across network disconnects. I love it.

> Whoa, that's a lot. I usually have only 3-4 things open at a time,

The thing with me is I kinda hate closing things. If I leave it open,
then when I finally get around to looking at it again, I can kinda pick
up where I left off.

Otherwise, I'll forget it even exists!


There's also some of them open just to be command shortcuts. So if I want
to rdesktop into the client's Windows server, instead of looking up the
address and getting all the redirections again (not as hard as it sounds,
i have a file called USEFUL with various things too), I just hit win+7,
up, enter.

> Heh. I used to have *three* X servers running, keyed to vt7, vt8, vt9,
> for 3 simultaneous login sessions, multiplexed by xdm. I still use xdm

oh man i haven't used xdm for a while. I used to have a cool diskless
terminal setup in my house. Old pentium 1 computers whose hard drives
died repurposed into netbooting from my linux box.

(BTW there was a place where getting xorg.conf right was a pain! Not to mention
other nfs and kernel stuff. I saw more kernel panics while setting that up
than I saw blue screens of death in the time I used windows 95.)


But then I could just hit the button in the other rooms and get a nice X login
screen presented, and my same blackbox based desktop a few seconds later. I liked
it.


But with my last desktop hardware failure - a bad power supply killed the motherboard -
I decided to finally dive into a 64 bit kernel and with that came updated distro that
killed the whole diskless setup.

Maybe some day I'll redo it, but I don't really remember how it worked and don't
want to spend days figuring it out again. I'll just stick to my Windows laptop :<

> (Why multiple sessions, you ask? 'cos at one point I was experimenting
> with different WM setups to see which one(s) I like better, but I still
> wanted to continue working on whatever it is I was working on without
> interruption, so having multiple copies of X running allowed me to keep

xnest is pretty cool too for playing with window managers.

> getting interrupted and dropping back to the Linux consoles.)

Linux consoles rock so much btw. I really enjoy the time I spend on them - when
the above mentioned motherboard died, I went back to my old computer for a while
and since I was accustomed to Linux by that point, I passed on the Win98.

But, that computer was too slow to run the bloated X11. So I just used linux
consoles. And it was *awesome*.

1) I had most the same programs I use all the time anyway, but now they were
prettier! I really like the way vga text mode looks. 80x25 is a bit small, but
it is workable and really beautiful.

2) I used some text mode replacements for other graphics programs, like naim instead
of gaim. Worked pretty well, though I didn't stick to it once I fixed my newer computer.
(Did however write my own p2p messenger that was beautiful and didn't have AOLs servers
to depend on. Sadly, I lost it though, the people I chatted with refused to use it :(
Now one of them wants to get on custom stuff again, thanks NSA, but I can't find that
code. Meh, eventually I'll just rewrite it in D anyway. (The original was written in C.))

3) Less idiocy with incompatible terminals. TERM=linux believe it or not, just works,
everywhere I tried it.



I'm tempted to go back to that for a while, but I probably can't avoid needing to
open something in gimp or firefox for a couple weeks straight anymore.

> TBH, I'm still not quite happy with the choice of escape sequence. If I
> had my way, I'd rather have <windowsKey> <F1..F12> instead. Maybe one of
> these days I'll write a D replacement for ratpoison that does just that.

Probably not too hard to just hack the source.

> (Ratpoison does let you configure the escape key, but it doesn't work
> with <windowsKey> for some stupid reason).

xev tells me the Windows key's keysyms are

 keycode 133 (keysym 0xffeb, Super_L)
 keycode 134 (keysym 0xffec, Super_R)


The bbkeys program I uses calls it Mod4 in its config file.

Maybe one of those names will help?

> Yeah, people can rant and rave about how Linux sux and what-not, but the
> fact of the matter is, I could run 3 copies of X11, each with 15 windows
> open on a Pentium with 128MB RAM, and be fully functional, whereas it
> takes every last drop of juice the system's got just for Windows'98 to

It's not even the memory that is good for me: it is the more efficient layouts.
The Windows taskbar gets unusable with more than about 10 windows (especially
on XP+, where it hides entries or combines them. Ugh, the point of the taskbar
is that everything is visible at once!)

> lets you use a minimal WM should you choose to, rather than in Windows
> where you *have* to use whatever MS has decided everyone must use, and

you can do that in Windows too, actually, though of course it is rare to
see in practice.



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