

E text editor version 2 released - j_baker
http://e-texteditor.com/blog/2010/e2-released

======
msbarnett
Alternate headline: Textmate clone beats Textmate to version 2.

This was pretty much my text editor of choice when I had to use a Windows box.

~~~
nanairo
In other news, Chrome, a Firefox clone, has beaten Firefox to version 4, and
also to version 5...

... Or maybe, just maybe, comparing version numbers across different programs
is completely useless.

~~~
sjs
Better not compare releases and new features either ... like it or not
TextMate is stagnant.

~~~
nanairo
If you want to compare features, then please do. I love TextMate but it's a
tool, and I'm happy to drop it if something better comes along (which might be
TM2 or not, don't care).

But discussing/comparing features is a sensible topic. Saying that E-text beat
Textmate to version 2 it useless. First, version number has nothing to do with
features (as I was pointing out in the browser world). Second you can say
E-text 2 is better than the latest Textmate, but nothing more: nobody apart
from the author (and his collaborator) knows what's TM2 gonna be like.

------
iamcalledrob
It's great to see progress being made with the TextMate model.

If E was brought properly to OS X, there could quite possible be a TextMate
coup.

------
edanm
I'm really interested in seeing what the "vim inspired command-mode" is all
about. Anyone know where I can see a screencast?

(Having said that, I seriously doubt anyone can pry me from my Sublime Text.
Multiple-cursor editing is just a much better model for editing than anything
I've ever seen before or since).

~~~
CWIZO
Watch the screencast. This editor also has multiple-cursor editing.

~~~
edanm
As far as I see, it isn't "true" multiple-cursor editing like Sublime has. At
least as far as I could tell from the video.

The difference being, in true multi-cursor selections, you actually have
several cursors which _behave like cursors_. So, for example, you can do
"ctrl+right", and all the cursors move forward one word. Even if all the words
are a different length, the cursors behave correctly.

This seems like a small deal but is actually huge. I'm planning to write up a
post about it some day, but I'd encourage anyone interested to check out
Sublime Text's multiple editing if you have some time.

~~~
naner
I can't imagine a situation where this functionality would be useful. Can you
give an example?

~~~
edanm
When I get some time, I'll write it up more fully with some screencasts.

For now, I'll try explaining: the way I think of it is, it lets you do the
exact same thing as macros, except live. Macros in vim/emacs/others are often
touted as a great feature, and they are. In vim for example, formatting a huge
column of, say, html text involves formatting one row using the proper
keyboard commands, then repeating the action multiple times. But with multiple
selection, you can operate on all the rows at once, easily seeing what it is
you're doing and how it's affecting all the rows.

Maybe even more importantly, it makes it _much_ easier to do activities you
wouldn't dream of doing in a macro, since it's much easier and more light-
weight. For example, say I have two very similar if statements, one which
deals with case "x" and one with case "y". Say I wanted to add a small piece
of code to both. I can, with one command, select both "if"s, then just write
away that piece of code. Lets say each "if" has a different variable name, I
can actually move the cursor up to the variable name, select the name, then
paste it every time I need to use it. This is the kind of repetitive task that
happens a _lot_ in real-life code, but which you would never use a macro for
since it takes to long to make work. With multiple cursors, it works easily.

Summary: multiple cursors make macro-like things 20 times more intuitive and
_much_ easier in practice, meaning you use them more, meaning you do less
repetitive stuff.

Hope that helps explain it; for more details, you'll have to wait/check out
Sublime yourself.

~~~
tene
I do that with macros all the time in vim.

    
    
        qa
        <do what you said>
        q
        <relocate the cursor>
        @a
    

It's not clear to me at all why I wouldn't dream of doing that in a macro, or
how that's not light-weight. Can you explain a bit more what the perceived
problem of using macros for this it?

~~~
edanm
OK, "you wouldn't dream" is a little rhetorical. There are obviously users
much more skilled than me who do use it. I'll try and answer from my
perspective. Sorry this post got long: I'm a big fan of editors, and I really
think this multiple-cursor thing is one of the most important new things to
happen in text-editing recently.

I used vim for a solid few months (not that much, I know) and emacs for a
while before that. I used both to create macros, but I found one problem: I
almost never managed to make the macro work exactly right the first time. This
is probably something that gets better with practice, but every time I set out
to create a macro, it took some thought into making sure I always remember to
start at the beginning of the line, always use searches to find the next
piece, etc.

None of this is a reason not to use macros: they still save time when dealing
with a lot of text. But this overhead, both the debugging overhead and the
"mental" overhead of thinking all these details through, definitely stopped me
from using them for macros I'd only use once.

On the other hand, in Sublime, let's say I have two similar "if"s. I select
the first "if", hit "ctrl+d" and it selects the second "if", and then I can
just start editing. I move the cursor down, move it to the place I want to
edit, edit away, all the while not having to think explicitly about this,
since I can _see everything that happens as it's happening_. This is just much
more intuitive, and not just for me: other programmers who don't have the same
"love of editors" I have watch me do this, and actually _ask how to do it
too_. These are people who wouldn't ever think of using a macro.

I hope that explains why I much prefer it. I really think this is the biggest
"revolution" in text editing that's happened in the last few years, and I
_really_ recommend you at least try it a bit. I promise I'll blog about this
on www.loopycode.com sometime soon, with actual screencasts and some better
examples.

~~~
tene
That's definitely informative and interesting. I feel like I'm missing
something, though. How exactly does multi-cursor solve the problems you
express with macros?

    
    
        it took some thought into making sure I always remember to start at the beginning of the line, always use searches to find the next piece, etc.
    

Does sublime's multi-cursor support move the cursors around differently? If
the next piece isn't positioned the same in the two hunks you're editing,
don't you have to use searches to find it with multi-cursors too, or are you
suggesting that Sublime has a way of knowing what you're wanting to edit, and
moves the cursor around for you?

~~~
edanm
Good catch - my post was long enough so I didn't get into it.

Mostly, this isn't a problem - you can move around using ctrl+arrow keys,
which moves by words. Most repetitive code is usually close enough that this
solves most problems, though once in a while you'll need to think of some
"creative" things to do. These are usually easy, like hitting home, and
because you see everything, you can easily see when you need to do it, and
what you need to do.

Having said that, there are still some things missing from Sublime Text. I
think this whole multi-cursor thing is brilliant and the future of text
editing, but we still have to discover a lot of the tricks.

For example, Sublime has nothing like vim's "forward to char" command. This is
an absolute must when using multi-cursors, since there _are_ times when moving
by words isn't enough. I had to implement this myself (very easy to extend
Sublime), since it's extremely useful.

Also, I implemented a few new ways of making multiple selections. For example,
I implemented a small function that splits up a selection by a char. So, I can
select the inside of a function's variable list (e.g. for "foo(int a, char
b)", I'd select the inside of the parans). Then, I use my function and split
by the ",", which effectively gives me two selections, one covering "int a",
and the other covering "char b". I can then cut these, go to a new line, and
paste these on two lines. In this way, I can take a function with 6 variables
and easily manipulate each of them, for example assigning them to "this.m_a",
etc. This is possible because of a function I implemented for myself, and
shows the kind of power I think this kind of editing will have the more people
get exposed to it.

------
makmanalp
I wonder how the "open company" thing turned out:

<http://e-texteditor.com/blog/2009/opencompany>
<http://e-texteditor.com/wiki/index.php/OpenCompany>

since it looks like this new version is closed again.

~~~
artost
According to the forum the source should be up in a weeks time.

------
mark_l_watson
I just got an email about the free update today. I only boot my Windows laptop
about once a week, but I am looking forward to kicking the tires of the new
version. Good editor.

E makes developing on Windows 7 nicer, but not as nice as OS X or Ubuntu.

------
daychilde
Maybe I'm missing something -- I write PHP files with HTML sections - and
often CSS <style> sections in HTML. I can't figure out how to get true multi-
language highlighting working. Does anyone else have this working?

If I choose HTML as the document type, I can style some PHP elements - but CSS
in particular is just standard foreground-on-background...

Otherwise, this looks like a replacement for PSPad, which is my current
choice.

~~~
daychilde
Well, further research and messing around: It looks like multiple-language
highlighting (a single document with HTML, PHP, and CSS) is not really
available.

I looked in the forum to try and see if I could figure out how to maybe add it
myself - but I see a whole lot of posts looking for help with no answers - and
I didn't find anything that helps me figure out how to get started maybe
adding this functionality.

I poked around in the various files included with the program, and I don't see
where the definitions are... Meh.

It's a pity - this looks _fantastic_ , but it won't work for me.

------
karl11
Love this text editor. Looking forward to trying this out.

------
cmykgrayscale
I'm an avid textmate user on my macbook. So, I decided to give e a shot on my
desktop a few months ago. Initially I thought it was pretty cool that i could
use all my bundles. but as I used it more I realized that there were too many
quirks and missing features (like when you select a word it highlights all
occurrences, auto brace completion, split view, etc)

I switched back to notepad++.

------
AdamGibbins
E was my editor of choice when Windows was my primary OS and a very nice
editor it was. It's a shame there's no Linux version :(

~~~
bnjamin
The author open sourced most of the code. You can find it here
<http://github.com/etexteditor/e> you should be able to compile a version that
works with linux.

~~~
AdamGibbins
Oh wow, thanks, wasn't aware of this. You say "most of the code" - do you know
what's missing?

------
dmnd
Pretty annoying that I can't even try out e2 as I've had my licensed copy of e
installed for longer than the trial period.

~~~
daeken
Ran into this myself. I moved my license key (in your user's AppData\Roaming\e
directory, filename " _license_key_ ") out of the way, then it gave me 30 days
to try it out, but YMMV.

------
cheald
The last time I tried e, it took over my entire system. I had context menu
entries floating around for months after I uninstalled it. Ugh.

------
est
How is Intype compared to e2 now?

------
safetytrick
I don't see significant enough improvements to make this a 2.0 release.

------
proee
I wish there was a split view option.

~~~
oneplusone
There is? Just drag a tab to the side or the bottom.

