choosing an editor

[GT]

hello there I have a small query I hoped someone out there might find it i their
heart to answer :
I need to work on my web site and see that
I have no less than at least 4 progs for that : bluefish 1.0.2
NvU
Quanta
Screem

naturally I can't go through all of them, although I have tried in the
past to design some simple site using the last two.

I used to use dreamweaver 2 (a few years back under windows) which
although rudimentary by today's standard did provide me with :
decent-ish frame creation (not brilliant but it did the job after some
headbanging),
(but I recently learned that frames are not a good idea anyway)

text handling and tabbing ok-ish
establishing page links visually (very nice) and updating them as
required. manipulating
local files as well as remote ones within the
environment (integrated up-download is nice, without having to resort to
another soft - I think it did anyway). I am not really looking for
flashy stuff, although being able to create menus (drop down type) would
be nice, and basically manage pics, links and all basic things to create
a decent looking and efficient site would be nice. the site is both for
perso and prof use (not selling stuff, just cv-type and showing works).

I did not flash on either quanta or screem but then again did not have
much time to spend on either.
can anyone help out with some ideas of pros-cons of these 4 contenders
???? or which to advise ?

thanks for any help !

G.

 

[mbstevens]

hello there I have a small query I hoped someone out there might find it i their
heart to answer :
I need to work on my web site and see that
I have no less than at least 4 progs for that :

bluefish 1.0.2
NvU
Quanta
Screem

Ugh. Get a text editor with syntax highlighting and
regular expressions. Download a good (X)HTML
template to modify with that editor.

integrated up-download is nice,

What are the chances of some WYSIWYG containing
the best tool available? Your operating system will
do the integration of the best tool that will run on
your machine.

I am not really looking for
flashy stuff, although being able to create menus
(drop down type) would be nice,

What are the chances of your WYSIWYG having the very best
of all available templates?
Get the best drop-down template in the world for your needs.
Modify it with a text editor.
Make absolutely sure the one you choose
degrades gracefully for visitors who
have no javascript.

 

[Roy Schestowitz]

__/ [ GT ] on Sunday 05 March 2006 06:52 \__

hello there I have a small query I hoped someone out there might find it i
their
heart to answer :
I need to work on my web site and see that
I have no less than at least 4 progs for that : bluefish 1.0.2
NvU

Never used it, but seen screenshots. It looks promising.

Quanta

Powerful as a text editor, but I prefer KWrite (Kate). I notice from the
header that you are using KDE.

Screem

No clue, but obscurity is no indication of poor quality. If you intend to
compose many pages, it's worth investigating.

naturally I can't go through all of them, although I have tried in the
past to design some simple site using the last two.

I used to use dreamweaver 2 (a few years back under windows) which
although rudimentary by today's standard did provide me with :
decent-ish frame creation (not brilliant but it did the job after some
headbanging),
(but I recently learned that frames are not a good idea anyway)

Frames are a terrible idea for many reasons. The only excuse for using them
in the first place is lack of wareness as to their long-term impact.

Remember that while Dreamweaver caters for quick and intuitive tailoring of
pages, underlying code is mystifying and page appearance is prone to
breakage once you depart from Dreamwaver and your favourite Web browser. You
then need to mend pages using a text editor, so why not /start/ with a text
editor or -- *better yet* -- a content management system. Consider Drupal,
Plone, WordPress and the likes of them.

text handling and tabbing ok-ish
establishing page links visually (very nice) and updating them as
required. manipulating
local files as well as remote ones within the
environment (integrated up-download is nice, without having to resort to
another soft - I think it did anyway). I am not really looking for
flashy stuff, although being able to create menus (drop down type) would
be nice, and basically manage pics, links and all basic things to create
a decent looking and efficient site would be nice. the site is both for
perso and prof use (not selling stuff, just cv-type and showing works).

Sites expand beyond expectation. Every long journey begins with a footstep,
or a mile. Invest properly at the start and you will understand the benefits
later.

I did not flash on either quanta or screem but then again did not have
much time to spend on either.
can anyone help out with some ideas of pros-cons of these 4 contenders
???? or which to advise ?

thanks for any help !

G.

All in all, I would suggest ditching text editors and WYSIWYG tools. The
latest generation of Web design paradigms is the CMS, provided you want a
consistent layout across your Web site.

Best wishes,

Roy

 

[Dylan Parry]

Pondering the eternal question of "Hobnobs or Rich Tea?", mbstevens
finally proclaimed:

Ugh. Get a text editor with syntax highlighting and
regular expressions.

Both Quanta and Bluefish are *exactly* that.

 

[GT]

Powerful as a text editor, but I prefer KWrite (Kate). I notice from the
header that you are using KDE.

I was under the impression quanta is designed for web design whereas Kate is only a
(powerful) text editor. so apart from the fact that quanta is (obviously) a text
editor too, are they not different in philosophy (kate not including web-related
tools)?

and yes, I am using KDE (could have been GNOME or other). Is this relevant ???

No clue, but obscurity is no indication of poor quality. If you intend to
compose many pages, it's worth investigating.

thank you for an intelligent answer (I mean it).
and yes I do intend to re-work my old web site, which will involve some substantial
changes, and includes a quite few pages. but this is *not* a *project*, only an
update (albeit a well-needed one!) which is but a small part of a larger framework,
(**)so I cannot afford to spend weeks learning the intricacies of all html-related
scripting languages, hence my need for either a wysiwyg soft (not my first choice by
far) or a good html editor with extensive tools / shortcuts. a little like kile for
latex if you wish (though I know a lot more about latex thant I do about html).

Frames are a terrible idea for many reasons. The only excuse for using them
in the first place is lack of wareness as to their long-term impact.

which confirms my newly-acquired understanding.

Remember that while Dreamweaver caters for quick and intuitive tailoring of
pages, underlying code is mystifying and page appearance is prone to
breakage once you depart from Dreamwaver and your favourite Web browser. You
then need to mend pages using a text editor, so why not /start/ with a text
editor or -- *better yet* -- a content management system. Consider Drupal,
Plone, WordPress and the likes of them.

I agree with you in principle and see above (**)
now this is new : *what* is a "content management system"? what does it do and why
would it be good to have one ? is there one included in linux ?
how is it related to bluefish? (which so far seems my first choice, what do you
think?)

Sites expand beyond expectation. Every long journey begins with a footstep,
or a mile. Invest properly at the start and you will understand the benefits
later.

*precisely* my point! which is why I wish to use what is best for my purposes while
having a nice superstructure to help me out (again, like kile). I do not seek
laziness, just efficiency given my context.

All in all, I would suggest ditching text editors and WYSIWYG tools. The
latest generation of Web design paradigms is the CMS, provided you want a
consistent layout across your Web site.*

I do, but bear in mind I am *not* looking for perfection, only a decently made
user-friendly not wysiwyg soft that allows a reasonable newcomer (don't know much
html, but can learn ) to produce a site in a reasonable time frame (a few days,
maybe 2 weeks max for about 10-15 pages)
again, kile is a good example. I used to use vi/m which I got to learn over the years,
but the shortcuts provided for by kile makes for very quick lated writing.
(while SWP under windows gave wysiwyg but ended up being a nightmare on latex street
upon porting my latex to linux - had to rewrite about 80% of 100s of pages !)

as for ditching test editors : a little confused, I understood from above that you
prefered kate, which is a text editor. or maybe you meant that given the choice you'd
rather have kate but this choise what not in the context of building a website?

and finally, what does "The latest generation of Web design paradigms is the CMS"
mean??? it take is CMS = content management system?


thank you
G

so : bluefish ? or am I barking up the wrong tree?

 

[Toby Inkster]

Pondering the eternal question of "Hobnobs or Rich Tea?", mbstevens
finally proclaimed:


Both Quanta and Bluefish are *exactly* that.

As is Screem.

Screem is actually a helluva nice editor for web stuff. If I was going to
go down the swiss-army-knife-of-web-development, Screem would be my chosen
editor.

It's a really nice tabbed text editor, with syntax highlighting for
HTML/XHTML/XML/SGML, Javascript, Perl, PHP and ASP (VBScript and JScript);
autocompletion of HTML attributes as you type (whatsmore, when you are
editing an HTML/XHTML/XML/SGML document it will actually *look* at the DTD
to determine which attributes are legal!)

It's got regular expression search-and-replace (what UNIX editor doesn't
though?)

It's got an integrated HTML preview (based on the GtkHTML rendering engine
I think), and menu options to launch up to four user-definable external
viewers. It builds a browsable DOM tree of the document that you're
editing, similar to the DOM inspector in Mozilla.

Lastly, it has an integrated file upload tool which supports FTP, WebDAV
and SCP.

As I say, if I were going down the swiss-army-knife route, Screem is what
I'd pick up.

 

[Roy Schestowitz]

__/ [ GT ] on Sunday 05 March 2006 14:23 \__

I was under the impression quanta is designed for web design whereas Kate
is only a (powerful) text editor. so apart from the fact that quanta is
(obviously) a text editor too, are they not different in philosophy (kate
not including web-related tools)?

and yes, I am using KDE (could have been GNOME or other). Is this relevant
???


thank you for an intelligent answer (I mean it).
and yes I do intend to re-work my old web site, which will involve some
substantial changes, and includes a quite few pages. but this is *not* a
*project*, only an update (albeit a well-needed one!) which is but a small
part of a larger framework, (**)so I cannot afford to spend weeks learning
the intricacies of all html-related scripting languages, hence my need for
either a wysiwyg soft (not my first choice by far) or a good html editor
with extensive tools / shortcuts. a little like kile for latex if you wish
(though I know a lot more about latex thant I do about html).

which confirms my newly-acquired understanding.


I agree with you in principle and see above (**)
now this is new : *what* is a "content management system"? what does it do
and why would it be good to have one ? is there one included in linux ?
how is it related to bluefish? (which so far seems my first choice, what do
you think?)

*precisely* my point! which is why I wish to use what is best for my
purposes while having a nice superstructure to help me out (again, like
kile). I do not seek laziness, just efficiency given my context.
I do, but bear in mind I am *not* looking for perfection, only a decently
made
user-friendly not wysiwyg soft that allows a reasonable newcomer (don't
know much html, but can learn ) to produce a site in a reasonable time
frame (a few days, maybe 2 weeks max for about 10-15 pages)
again, kile is a good example. I used to use vi/m which I got to learn over
the years, but the shortcuts provided for by kile makes for very quick
lated writing. (while SWP under windows gave wysiwyg but ended up being a
nightmare on latex street upon porting my latex to linux - had to rewrite
about 80% of 100s of pages !)

as for ditching test editors : a little confused, I understood from above
that you prefered kate, which is a text editor. or maybe you meant that
given the choice you'd rather have kate but this choise what not in the
context of building a website?

and finally, what does "The latest generation of Web design paradigms is
the CMS" mean??? it take is CMS = content management system?


thank you
G

so : bluefish ? or am I barking up the wrong tree?

To address each point in turn, Kate does *not* provide shortcuts and
macros for HTML, but it highlights syntax using colours, which will be
helpful if you are fluent at HTML mark-up.

If you work on your pages over FTP, be sure to open the files in Kon-
queror. It will copy the file/s opened to /tmp locally and toss them back
onto the server (in the background) whenever you save them. Give it a go
and you will see what I mean. It's a productivity tool that Windows XP and
Mac OSX users can only ever eye with envy. The filetypes and applications
used are arbitrary.

As regards the question on desktop environments, I use GNOME quite fre-
quently, but I would not describe it as suitable for development (Web de-
velopment included) or editing as KDE, assuming 'out of the box' GTK ap-
plications versus QT applications.

I have personally used LyX as a front-end to LaTeX since 2001. I know Kile
as well and I admire its cause (confer JabRef as well). As in the case
with most technical toolsets, there is no guarantee that you will be able
to escape from lower-level, more pertinent aspects of the tool. I still
use raw LaTeX for publications and, most likely, you will need to know raw
HTML in order to mend browser anomalies and implement browser hacks. To
use an analogy: What happens when you are served with a strict TeX tem-
plate? This is the equivalent of importing HTML/PHP/CGI/other pages and
learning from existing ones.

I suggest you do some reading on the subject of content management sys-
tems. Based on the questions asked, you have misconceptions. A CMS is the
best bar none tool for development of sites, in my humble opinion. It de-
pends on the nature of the site, of course, but for most personal sites
(not service-driven), a CMS is the only way to go. Anyone who confutes
this is most likely showing resistance to an unknown and trying to push
away and suppress novelty.

As a WordPress contributer, I urge you to make that a choice for your ren-
ovated site. It is very intuitive and possible to master within a few
days.

Best wishes and good luck,

Roy

PS - message automatically justified and hyphenated using TeX and Perl.

 

[Stan McCann]

Ugh. Get a text editor with syntax highlighting and
regular expressions. Download a good (X)HTML
template to modify with that editor.

Umm. Isn't bluefish a text editor? And Quanta? Nvu isn't and I've
not heard of Screem. I don't know why the OP would lump text and
graphical editors together. Maybe bluefish and Quanta have a graphical
mode I don't know about? It's been quite a while since I've looked at
either. Does Nvu have a text mode?

As far as downloading a "good" template. How do you expect anyone to
know a "good" template without knowing HTML and CSS? I don't use, and
don't recommend other people's templates. If you're not going to learn
the language you are dealing with, you might as well just use DW, MS
Word or any of the other graphical editors that spew forth pure crap.

You've got to become good with HTML and CSS before that. Until you are
competant, you should depend on sftp or ftp so you are working off-line
and can make a backup before uploading.

I work directly to/from the server and have pulled some big goofs. I'm
also the sys admin so could pull stuff out of backups. Are you the sys
admin?

What are the chances of some WYSIWYG containing
the best tool available? Your operating system will
do the integration of the best tool that will run on
your machine.
???


What are the chances of your WYSIWYG having the very best
of all available templates?
Get the best drop-down template in the world for your needs.
Modify it with a text editor.

Again, without knowing the languages involved, how would someone know
the "best"? Not to mention that drop-downs are not necessarily the
best type of menuing system to use.

Make absolutely sure the one you choose
degrades gracefully for visitors who
have no javascript.

That's easy. Learn HTML and CSS to write your pages yourself; don't
bother learning javascript and you won't have to worry about it. None
of your pages will have any.

 

[Jim Higson]

To address each point in turn, Kate does *not* provide shortcuts and
macros for HTML,

There are some plugins, which can be used for HTML. The plugins are "XML
completion", "XML checker" (in case you're doing XHTML) and "HTML Tools".

I'm using Kate 3.4 (even though I have KDE 3.5). In Debian/Ubuntu they are
provided by the kate-plugins package.

but it highlights syntax using colours, which will be
helpful if you are fluent at HTML mark-up.

If you work on your pages over FTP, be sure to open the files in Kon-
queror. It will copy the file/s opened to /tmp locally and toss them back
onto the server (in the background) whenever you save them. Give it a go
and you will see what I mean. It's a productivity tool that Windows XP and
Mac OSX users can only ever eye with envy. The filetypes and applications
used are arbitrary.

I completely agree!

As regards the question on desktop environments, I use GNOME quite fre-
quently, but I would not describe it as suitable for development (Web de-
velopment included) or editing as KDE, assuming 'out of the box' GTK ap-
plications versus QT applications.

I have personally used LyX as a front-end to LaTeX since 2001. I know Kile
as well and I admire its cause (confer JabRef as well). As in the case
with most technical toolsets, there is no guarantee that you will be able
to escape from lower-level, more pertinent aspects of the tool. I still
use raw LaTeX for publications and, most likely, you will need to know raw
HTML in order to mend browser anomalies and implement browser hacks. To
use an analogy: What happens when you are served with a strict TeX tem-
plate? This is the equivalent of importing HTML/PHP/CGI/other pages and
learning from existing ones.

I suggest you do some reading on the subject of content management sys-
tems. Based on the questions asked, you have misconceptions. A CMS is the
best bar none tool for development of sites, in my humble opinion. It de-
pends on the nature of the site, of course, but for most personal sites
(not service-driven), a CMS is the only way to go. Anyone who confutes
this is most likely showing resistance to an unknown and trying to push
away and suppress novelty.

Agreed again (personally I like Drupal, but it depends on the site)

 

[GT]

well thats an interesting case of crossfiring :

Umm. Isn't bluefish a text editor? And Quanta? Nvu isn't and I've
not heard of Screem. I don't know why the OP would lump text and
graphical editors together. Maybe bluefish and Quanta have a graphical
mode I don't know about? It's been quite a while since I've looked at
either. Does Nvu have a text mode?

as far as I am concerned they all are. they just also include a rather large arsenal
of "clickable" shortcuts to build sites.
now, how good the philosophy is or how good a job they make at *applying* this
philosophy is not really what I am after here ...

As far as downloading a "good" template. How do you expect anyone to
know a "good" template without knowing HTML and CSS? I don't use, and
don't recommend other people's templates.

I would tend to agree

If you're not going to learn
the language you are dealing with, you might as well just use DW, MS
Word or any of the other graphical editors that spew forth pure crap.

well, that's overshooting a bit. I agree that learning some of the language is
required, but one can't become expert at everything.
as for DW MS etc... experience has shown me they go from incredibly bad (to the point
where you begin to believe that what the machine is doing is what you actually
*wanted* to do in the first place (which, of course, is not the case!) to
reasonable.

You've got to become good with HTML and CSS before that. Until you are
competant, you should depend on sftp or ftp so you are working off-line
and can make a backup before uploading.

well; to be honest I don't really need imbedded ftp. shell is fine although, again, a
graph interface is nice.
you see, when you do not know everything, being faced with a blank cursor does not
really help. when you have a GUI, at least you can explore and try things out.
at the moment, shell ftp works (almost) fine, gftp refuses to log on to the remote. no
idea why.

I work directly to/from the server and have pulled some big goofs. I'm
also the sys admin so could pull stuff out of backups. Are you the sys
admin?

with Qs like these? I'd keep the day job. no, I am merely a mathematician trying to
get my website up to date and finding a decent soft to do in with (yeah, I know :
learn html ,css, xhtml, etc .... ) in a reasonable time 2 week for 10 p give or take.
been there for years and seriously needs some maintenance / redesigning.

???

no idea what that meant either.

Again, without knowing the languages involved, how would someone know
the "best"? Not to mention that drop-downs are not necessarily the
best type of menuing system to use.

agreed. and no, I guess they are not, but this is a possible.

That's easy. Learn HTML and CSS to write your pages yourself; don't
bother learning javascript and you won't have to worry about it. None
of your pages will have any.

I am sorry, did not get that.

 

[Stan McCann]

well, that's overshooting a bit. I agree that learning some of the
language is required, but one can't become expert at everything.

That's more from frustration than anything. I have users screaming for
"Word Quality" web pages. In other words, using a graphical interface
to place things "pixel perfect" like they do when they create Word
documents. I often want to just throw my hands up and yell out, yeah,
just place any old garbage on the site. Sad as it is, some have.

well; to be honest I don't really need imbedded ftp. shell is fine
although, again, a graph interface is nice.
you see, when you do not know everything, being faced with a blank
cursor does not really help. when you have a GUI, at least you can
explore and try things out. at the moment, shell ftp works (almost)

Some things require lots of exploration to find or someone to teach
you. I start off my beginners course with an introduction to protocols
and programs that may be useful.

with Qs like these? I'd keep the day job. no, I am merely a
mathematician trying to get my website up to date and finding a

Then you'd beat me to death in a math test.

decent soft to do in with (yeah, I know : learn html ,css, xhtml,
etc .... ) in a reasonable time 2 week for 10 p give or take. been
there for years and seriously needs some maintenance / redesigning.

Understood, I have math teachers, sciences teachers, English, nursing,
.... all wanting WYSIWYG editors. They don't believe me when I tell
them there is no such thing.

So, I'm in the process of writing a program that I hope to also turn
into a CMS written specifically for my site.

agreed. and no, I guess they are not, but this is a possible.

That's why I've learned to avoid the use of "always" and "never".
Either can get you in trouble.

I am sorry, did not get that.

He was saying the pages should degrade for those without javascript and
I was saying in rather a smart assed way don't use javascript at all.

 

[mbstevens]

I would tend to agree

You _would_ have to ask three (count 'em 3) questions instead of one.
On the other hand, if you get the wrong answer about an integrated
system, when you give the integrated system up you have to give
up the good parts of it.

no idea what that meant either.

I meant: What happens if you get an all-in-one tool, and
one part of it is not up to snuff?
Or what if that part is not nearly as good as the best
separate tool available?

With the operating systems and desktops I use, you just
tab together different programs, or put them in windows on the same
page. You might (HORRORS!) even have to write a small script to make
them work more closely together, depending on your needs.

Certainly you'd do better spending your time learning Perl, Python,
bash, Ruby, or PHP than getting to know an all-in-one tool.

 

[Nick Theodorakis]

Stan McCann wrote:
[...]

That's more from frustration than anything. I have users screaming for
"Word Quality" web pages. In other words, using a graphical interface
to place things "pixel perfect" like they do when they create Word
documents. I often want to just throw my hands up and yell out, yeah,
just place any old garbage on the site. Sad as it is, some have.

That level of "control" isn't even possible with Word. Another user may
not have the same fonts installed, or her printer may have different
margins, or maybe the home office uses A4 whereas you use US letter,
etc. ...

Nick

 

[Stan McCann]

Certainly you'd do better spending your time learning Perl, Python,
bash, Ruby, or PHP than getting to know an all-in-one tool.

I've no idea what you are going on about. Who said anything about some
all in one tool? Although I do have one; it's called a text editor. I
can edit HTML, CSS, and my current favorite programming method PHP all
with the same editor (UltraEdit). Does that make it an all-in-one
tool?

 

[mbstevens]

I've no idea what you are going on about. Who said anything about some
all in one tool?

GT did.

Original post wanted web tool/editor with 'integrated up-download' and
ability 'to create menus (drop-down type)'. It also hinted that the
ability to 'establish page links visually' would be nice.

You should always _at_least_ read the opening post in a thread.

 

[Stan McCann]

Stan McCann wrote:
[...]

That's more from frustration than anything. I have users screaming
for "Word Quality" web pages. In other words, using a graphical
interface to place things "pixel perfect" like they do when they
create Word documents. I often want to just throw my hands up and
yell out, yeah, just place any old garbage on the site. Sad as it
is, some have.

That level of "control" isn't even possible with Word. Another user
may not have the same fonts installed, or her printer may have
different margins, or maybe the home office uses A4 whereas you use
US letter, etc. ...

I know that and you know that. Users mostly only care about what they
see on their screen. They don't understand when things don't work the
same somewhere else.

I've dealt with faculty (computer faculty!) that do their lesson plans
and whatnot at home on their computer not connected to a network,
possibly using older software, then can't understand why everything
doesn't work the same when they are in class putting on some
demonstration.

This is getting off topic now as I'm talking more about general sys
admin stuff now.

 

[Stan McCann]

Original post wanted web tool/editor with 'integrated up-download'
and ability 'to create menus (drop-down type)'. It also hinted that
the ability to 'establish page links visually' would be nice.

OK, I remember that now. It was snipped from the thread as the thread
changed directions.

You should always _at_least_ read the opening post in a thread.

I did; in fact I read every post in the thread that showed up on my
server. CRS doesn't let me remember too much past a day or two though.

 

[GT]

Right, so let's see :
in terms of tools : any text editor is sufficient (just like for prog dev, which it is
in fact). need to know internet related web-building languages. well this will get
done as the site progresses.

so, other tools with built-in help (screem seems appropriate) provide stumbling
blocks / questions in a natural manner (as the site is built) to direct learning
process. since the site was originally made from wysiwyg tools it is not really
difficult to "rectify" it since the code is what we work on.

language-learning follows as a natural consequence.

now, this CMS thing seems kind of interwoven with the above. according to what google
gives me, sounds like a piece of soft. Plume.
well, let's get to know each other, shall we dance ?

Thanks to all. It's been an education!

G.T.

 

[jussij]

in terms of tools : any text editor is sufficient (just like

for prog dev, which it is in fact).

But using a text editor specifically designed for programming
will make things easier:

http://www.zeusedit.com/features.html
Note: Zeus is shareware (45 day trial).

Jussi Jumppanen
Author: Zeus for Windows