Is Komodo the way to go? Well, I am convinced. I have been working a bit with TextMate and Coda on the Mac, and e-texteditor on Windows. I like features in all of these. But I would like a crossplatform editor (since I work an the three major platforms), is fast but has enough features to work with. Komodo Edit by Active State has it all.

It has

• Project management
• Good Find/Replace
• Snippets (which you can set to Key Bindings), Macros, Commands
• Plugin friendly, and available plugins (like a source tree and database explorer)
• Good code completion
• It is fast enought
• Works on Windows, OS X, Linux
• Can Import/Export snippets between platform

Check the website at Active State for more features. One thing I found is that I need to change the default setting to get it the way I like (for example Tab indent and not Spaces). Here is some of the steps I use:

Change indention

In the Preferences / Editor / Indention, change Prefer tabs over spaces, and change “Number of spaces…” and “Width of each tab…” to 8. I discovered indention works better when both is set to the same value (which BTW is the same with Netbeans).

Fix so that Ctrl + Shift + W closes all files

Open Preferences / Editor / Key Bindings. In the input field “Commands” write “Select end” and select “Editor: Select to end of word”. Click “Clear”. Now write “Close all”  in the input field “Commands”. Select “Editor: Close all buffers”. Select the input field “New key bindings” and hold down Ctrl + Shift + W.  Click Ok, now your done! :)

Install Add-Ons

Extension and Plugins are the same format as in Firefox and Thunderbird, .xpi. There is an Extension  that is called NST and gives you a sourcetree for the file you are working in.

Today I needed a fix for pgAdmin on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucis Lynx, which is my workstation (pgAdmin is a graphical ui for PostgreSQL database). To my dispair it just closed down when I tried to start it. Luckily I found a solution in this bugreport. I compiled my own and could continue to work.

This is what I did (note: I don’t garuantee it will work for you, I am not a software developer).

apt-get source pgadmin3
sudo apt-get install debhelper libpq-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev autotools-dev devscripts
cd pgadmin3-1.10.2
dpkg-buildpackage
sudo dpkg -i ../pgadmin3_1.10.2-1_i386.deb

Today I really needed to find and replace in many files at once, and found this great feature to exists in Quanta. I have actually not seen it before. The menuitem says “Edit“->”Find in files” so one might think it doesn’t replace. But it does :) It’s a part of KWebDev that is named KFileReplace, and is also included in Quanta. A function that saved my day.

KFileReplace in Quanta

Is your favorite application possible to translate? If the developers used the GNU gettext library, yes, with poEdit or similar editor. WordPress is an example.

To translate you do not have to be able to code, but of course you have to know the language well. So dont be afraid to try! :)

Step 1, the POT
This is a step which should already have been taken care of by the developer. poEdit scans the files in a catalog for translatable strings to create a file named .pot (Portable Object Template). If there is a .pot-file, use it to create a .po for your language.

Step 2, the PO
The .po-file (Portable Object) is the one you will work with, it contains the strings and values for the translation. The naming of files can be different between projects. For example, a common way to make a swedish translation: choose to open the POT and generate a .po-file, save as sv_SE.po for the swedish language.

Step 3, the MO
When you translate the strings you have the original text to the left, and the translation to the right. Mark the word you want to translate and fill in the form at the bottom. Each time the file is saved, a .mo (Machine Object) file is generated. It is this file the webbapplication will use.

Some more reading on this subject:

• Translating WordPress
• Translating WordPress plugins and themes

I have a confession about editors to make. I hate(!) auto-completion.

In theory it sounds great with suggestions and auto-features. In real life it’s an obstacle to overcome.
The plan is, I guess, to make me faster. But instead it slows me down. If I know what I’m going to write in a script I don’t get faster with popups and shit.

Can I tweak the auto-completion in most editors? Yes of course, but almost never enough. So I just either get more and more annoyed during the day, or I turn it off. The editor that gives me the complete control over this features gets my love.

I’m really starting to like it, but got stuck on how to make Netbeans use tabs for indention. Deselecting the option “Extend tabs to spaces” didn’t work for me, I still got those damn spaces (I hate indention by spaces).

I found the solution though, go to your “Options“-panel, choose the “Editor” page, select “Formatting” and set “Tab size” and “Number of spaces to indent” to the same size.

Update: More PHP’ers falling for Netbeans.

I got some ideas from LinkedPHPers, a group on LinkedIn. There is a discussion going on, “What is the best free application that runs in Ubuntu 9.10 – the Karmic Koala for development of websites in PHP?” My own anser was Quanta Plus or Eclipse PDT for projects and gEdit for lighter/faster edits. But a lot of people mentioned Netbeans. So I’m giving Netbeans a try on my Ubuntu and my OS X machine.

A brief try today I like it, but I think the use of snippets/templates/palettes/macros (different names in different editors for the recycling of code) should be made easier. I like the way Quanta handles them, drag and drop to create but the option for more advanced edit. And stored in a common format like .txt. The whole idea with snippets is to speed up your coding, at least to me. But I still need to check further in Netbeans, as I said I only had a brief look today. So this is NOT a review … yet ;)

By the way you might have noticed I got some new pages up, “Free editors for OS X” and “Free texteditors for Linux”. I intend to continue with Windows editors soon, and the review them all.

The image you see below is the editor Quanta Plus on Mac OS X. It is a port of KDE WebDev and is usually run on Linux. Since I’ve been working with it for a while I tought it would be nice to get it going on Apples Mac OS X too.

Macports
I began by installing MacPorts (an “an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing, and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based open-source software on the Mac OS X operating system”).

Before you install MacPorts be sure to have Apples X11 User/window environment (installed as default in OS X 10.5+) ans XCode Developer Tools.

The next step was to install the base for the K Desktop Environment (KDE3). This is done by opening the Terminal and write:

sudo port install kdebase3

The instal might take a while. Now for the programs. Install kdewebdev3, a webdeveloping package including Quanta Plus.

sudo port install kdewebdev3

Once again, the install can take some time so be patient. When it’s done you can find the apps in /opt/local/bin. Good to go!

The latest months I’ve been working as an employee with Quanta on Xubuntu, and I love the way snippets is handled in Quanta Plus. They are stored as simple .txt-files, which are created when you drag selected code into the sidebar. The snippets are called “Templates”, which might be a little confusing. They also have a scope – Global, Local or Project. I mainly use Global, so I have all in the same place and can reach them. I then share the with Dropbox, making the snippets available in my OS X and Windows too.

Since upgrade of Linux I have a lot of problem with Eclipse in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic). First of all buttons are not possible to press any more. But I also have an issue with that it is very slow. Other people also seem to have the problem and have posted workarounds, but none of them has done the trick for me so far.

At work I use Quanta Plus instead at the moment, and I kind of like it. Would love to have it on OS X and Windows too though.

The button who wouldn't be pressed