

Neutron Drive - A code editor for Google Drive and Chrome - cyberpanther
https://neutron-drive.appspot.com/

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TeMPOraL
Won't replace Emacs for me for a simple reason - even if this editor supported
rebinding keyboard shortcuts, the platform - Chrome - won't allow to bind some
key combinations, like CTRL+n. It's a failure of the platform, not the editor;
web version of Emacs (featured on HN some time ago) is also unusable on this
browser.

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cyberpanther
Totally understand and noticed Chrome is taking away more shortcuts. Used to
be able to do Ctrl-O and now with Chrome 21 that stopped working, and it
always opens the open dialog.

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d23
Does anyone have examples of good use cases for this? I personally can't
imagine why it would be more useful than my full IDE, though I'm eager to hear
how others might use it.

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cyberpanther
Agreed this might not replace your full IDE, but it could maybe used as a
compliment to your normal development for a quick update on the go, or maybe
you need to review some code when your not at your desk. Also once Google
releases the docs collaboration API, you'll be able to do pair programming.

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maratd
I use cloud9, which has ace as the base platform as well. It completely
replaced Aptana (Eclipse based fork) for me. I use it exclusively for
development and it works quite well.

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alcidesfonseca
You should blog about it. I am really interesting in knowing your workflow and
the reasons.

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maratd
I don't have time to blog, unfortunately. The reason was simple, I wanted a
development stack that includes as little natively installed software as
possible. With just Chrome, I have everything I need. I connect via VPN to my
office network. The Secure Shell extension lets me connect to my server via
SSH, Cloud9 allows me to edit code, and I can see my work in the same browser.
In the end, I can develop on any machine that has a modern browser installed.

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manaskarekar
If I understand correctly, this naturally handles concurrent multiple users
the way a normal Google document would?

Looks very cool!

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PizzaPanther
Waiting for the Google to release their collaboration API to allow real time
collaboration. But yes right now you can share a file just like you would as a
Google Document.

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laughinghan
By "concurrent multiple users the way a normal Google document would", I think
manaskarekar meant real-time collaboration, so that's a no.

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SquareWheel
Looks really good. I had high hopes for Bespin, but I haven't heard anything
about that in some time, so I suppose I'll start watching this project
instead.

I know it's based heavily on GDocs, but my workflow is based around Dropbox.
Maybe something could be rigged up there.

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jmitcheson
Bespin merged with "Ace" - the new project is at <http://ace.ajax.org/> or
<https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace>.

As an aside, I was sad to see Bespin go. It used canvas for rendering, while
Ace uses the DOM. While the Ace team had good reasons for this, Bespin just
looked so.. pretty..

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SquareWheel
Oh my, and this is based on "Ace", so we've come full circle.

I didn't realize Bespin was gone, that's a shame, but it looks like they're
making a lot of progress. Being in the process of moving from a (dying)
desktop to a laptop, I appreciate things like Chrome syncing where I don't
have to spend a whole day configuring my browser any more. I am okay with
moving more of my apps to the web, assuming offline mode is always an option.
I look forward to more "cloud" products like this.

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skybrian
What does "Google Drive revision control" mean in this case?

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cyberpanther
If ever use Google Docs, there is a complete revision history of all changes
made to the doc. Neutron Drive implements this feature and keeps revisions for
you also of any file you edit.

If you ever need to go back and revert to an old version of a file you can
just review all your old versions and revert.

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agravier
It might be a nice app but it requires permission to perform R/W operations
when I'm not using the application. Why do you need those permissions?

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cyberpanther
The app doesn't do this, but in order to list all files on your drive I had to
request full permissions.

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dbaupp
It might be nice to have this explanation visible on the page too (I was also
a little disconcerted by it request so many permissions).

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jamesmeador
You can leverage App Engine's Channel API for some minimal collaboration
techniques.

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DonnyV
I wonder when they will offer side by side compare with older revisions.

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cyberpanther
Taking feature requests at: <https://github.com/pizzapanther/Neutron-
Drive/issues>

