"Favorite editor? Hard to say. I'm mostly using XEmacs and it's quite ok. But it's not my favorite. It lacks very useful editing features known from MS-Windows IDE's, like showing a function's arguments when typing a call in the code. This requries profound C++ parsing and understanding in real-time, nothing you can do fast enough in lisp, unfortunately. So eventually, we have to replace Emacs with a K-Tool, I guess."

The subject isn't quite accurate. He's praising a particular feature found in most Windows based IDEs, not the IDEs themselves. Splitting hairs, but we wouldn't want to put words into the mouth of one of our own, eh? :o) I've seen this feature in commercial IDEs on Linux (JBuilder comes to mind), and the Eric3 python IDE helps a little bit in this respect. Not in any free editor though.

This is now a couple years old, but things really haven't changed regarding C++ that much. It's getting there in KDevelop, but right now it's got the best of them challenged. Part of the reason the functionality isn't there is because too many people don't share Matthias's opinion. But what's Matthias Ettrich know about programming anyway?

It's this sort of thing which occasionally makes me despair of Linux on the desktop. The hackers who cut the code really don't seem too interested in what users want. "We do it for fun," they say, "we're not forcing you to use it if you don't want to." The view seems particularly prevalent amongst KDE developers. I think the influence of Sun et al is helping push GNOME more in the right direction. The problem is endemic. We don't have a decent website building tool like Dreamweaver because hackers know how to cut HTML code. We don't have a decent XML manipulation tool like XMLSpy because hackers know how to cut XML code. There are dozens of text editors out there, but none which are simple and powerful enough to offer these sorts of completion features Matthias is talking about. And as you say, years later, still no one is listening. Depressing. I think I'll have a beer... :o)

On Thursday 26 February 2004 06:11 am, Adis Nezirovic wrote:

On Thu, 2004-02-26 at 07:29, Steven T. Hatton wrote:

...

... It lacks very useful editing features known from MS-Windows IDE's, like showing a function's arguments when typing a

call in

...

the code. This requries profound C++ parsing and understanding in

real-time,

...

nothing you can do fast enough in lisp, unfortunately...

Anjuta IDE have this feature, at least for standard C and writing GTK/GNOME applications. Anjuta uses SciTE/Scintilla text widget. You can also write your own "API" SciTE files for C/C++, Python, Java;

e.g (from SciTE docs)

"The .api files can be generated by hand or by using a program. For C/C++ headers, an API file can be generated using ctags and then the tags2api Python script (which assumes C/C++ source) on the tags..."

Anjuta http://anjuta.sourceforge.net SciTE http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html SciTE docs http://scintilla.sourceforge.net/mirror/SciTEDoc.html

Both of these have code completion. www.netbeans.org www.eclipse.org KDevelop has a minimal, but improving code completion for C++. Even (x)Emacs has it for SGML. Ettrich is, in principle, wrong about the speed of lisp being an issue. Components of XEmacs can and are witten in C and recently even C++. The reason why Emacs lacks it is the people who maintain it do see it as useful. STH