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Best Python editor (under Linux)

Ganesan R rganesan at myrealbox.com
Fri Jan 3 07:28:10 EST 2003 
>>>>> "Steve" == Steve Lamb <grey at despair.dmiyu.org> writes:

> On 03 Jan 2003 14:48:51 +0530, Ganesan R <rganesan at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>> I see, it's about scripts. Programs written in Lisp are something beneath
>> you. That's fine :-).

>     No.  Let me put it another way.

>     Will the lisp scripts work outside of Emacs on a lisp only engine?  No?
> Why not?  

No, because your "scripts" will call emacs internal functions. I don't
expect jed extension scripts to work outside of jed though it's written in
slang (a language that slrn also uses) for the same reason. 

>     It is the melding of an editor with a scripting language *and then* the
> penchant for having everything under the sun programmed for it.  If the
> extensions were somehow related to editing I can understand that.  

Then, you're not really complaining about emacs. You are complaining about
extension authors who have gone ahead and written everything under the sun,
as you put it, using the extension language. This actually argues for
Emacs. If the programming language is powerful enough, people can and will
program crazy things with it. 

I find some of them useful, others not. For example I use gnus as a
newsreader because it's the best out there. I like it better than Pan, slrn
or mozilla news. I don't use any of the emacs mailers (I prefer mutt), or
the web browser (w3) written to it because I find galeon more useful. I am
even amazed that w3 exists though I don't actually use it. It's mere
existence doesn't make my emacs "bloated".

> For example vim too is extensible.  I have a script for using aspell for
> spell checking.  Spell checking happens to be a common enough thing that
> people would do.  It isn't common enough that it should be included in a
> text editor.  It is its own application and I am glad that I can swap it
> out for something else if something better comes along.  OTOH an editor
> having an entire newsreader written for it in the scripting language is
> like having tetris written in the scripting language.  What the hell do
> either of those have to do with editing?  Nothing.

Actually, there does exist a tetris written for emacs :-). I actually happen
to like a game called gomoku written in emacs lisp. I still fail to see your
problem. If any thing, it only proves that Richard Stallman chose an
excellent extension language for Emacs (though I admit I would prefer pymacs
myself). 

It then appears that your main complaint is that emacs ships with all these
extensions that have nothing to do with editing. It's a valid complaint, I
cringe at the size of distribution for every new emacs release. Emacs 20 is
all of 28megs on my disk - emacs21 is 40meg. I wish many of the stuff gets
separated out that so that I can install only what I need. But then some
people like "batteries included" for their entire life time :-). I guess
I'll have to live with that :-).

>     It is that mixing of two jobs into a single whole that is the problem.
> Is it an editor?  No, it is a lisp engine.  Is it a lisp engine?  No, it
> is an editor.  Sorry, don't think they mix.

Actually, I think they mix pretty very well. I am not sure if it's because
it had a lisp engine or because it was the only editor around at the time
with a complete programming language to write programming extensions for it.

>     'sides, if I wanted a language embedded into my editor (instead of called
> from) I much prefer Python be it.

So would I :-). But, that doesn't stop me from taking advantage of what has
been already written. Listen, you have valid complaints about emacs. I also
cringe at how much it has grown. But please don't be misled by the myth that
it is bloated. There is reason for the "bloat" and these days is not all
that bad actually. For example here's the top output of a newly started
emacs and gvim. Not bad right.

  PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME COMMAND
  739 rganesan  15   0  7360 7360  3992 R     0.0  2.8   0:00 emacs
  742 rganesan  15   0  6312 6312  4144 S     0.0  2.4   0:00 gvim

Actually, vim isn't too bad (around 2+MB) on start up. GTK+ adds a lot of
"bloat". xjed does a lot better

  752 rganesan  15   0  2232 2232  1612 S     0.0  0.8   0:00 xjed

Don't even get me started about these "modern" IDEs. Eclipse starts at
60Meg, even the so called "fast" IntelliJ starts at 40Meg. I guess both of
them would count as serious editors in your book. Now, that's bloat.

Let's take two standard editors in KDE and GNOME.

  PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME COMMAND
18060 rganesan   9   0  8000 8000  6732 S     0.0  3.1   0:00 kedit
18219 rganesan  10   0  5136 5136  3968 S     0.0  2.0   0:00 gedit

Sorry for keeping this out of topic thread alive in this newsgroup. I'll
shut up now. 

Ganesan

-- 
Ganesan R
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