On Nov 24, 2004, at 5:03 AM, Ollivier Robert wrote:

> On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 14:36:27 +0900, Jamie Orchard-Hays wrote:
>
>> I'm curious what people are favoring for editors and IDEs for Ruby. 
>> I've
>> been playing with TextMate, but coming from Intellij, I miss all the
>> completion.
>
> TextMate (which I also used and have registered) does completion
> (based on what has alreay been typed in the file) and also has 
> "snippets"
> where you can completely define the completion (even with 
> placeholders...).
>
> Recommended (on OSX only though).

I'm keeping an eye on TextMate.  I'll even admit that it has some 
features that I could really get into, but...

For my money, BBEdit is still king on Mac OS X.  I've been using BBEdit 
for many years now and it's just hard to beat the raw power that it 
offers through an elegant interface, in my opinion.

The "Find..." dialog in BBEdit is quite possibly perfect.  It's a 
massive selection of options that allow you to quickly locate or change 
anything in the current file or a group of files you can specify 
countless different ways.  Beyond that one dialog, there is a huge 
"Search" menu that complements it wonderfully.  I need that everyday 
and couldn't live without it.

BBEdit's "Markup" menu is a handy tool, the "Text" manipulation menu 
does most of the mundane tasks of text management for me, CVS and Unix 
script integration is smooth, the new "Text Factories" make mass 
editing trivial...  I could go on and on.

One thing that REALLY sets BBEdit apart from other GUI editors though 
is that you can have it anyway you like it.  Open "Preferences..." and 
your eyes will bulge.  It takes awhile to figure out what everything 
controls, but when you do, you'll edit in an environment customized to 
the way you think.  You can change any menu keyboard shortcut and add 
your own.  This means a lot to me.  I want to edit how I want to edit, 
not how some designer thinks I should want to edit.

To be fair, BBEdit's price tag comes with more than a little sticker 
shock, though for me it has been very worth it.  Also, along the lines 
of the original post, BBEdit doesn't have an auto-completion feature 
(save Glossary items you build).  Code folding, another popular topic 
here, is not yet implemented either.

My vote is BBEdit, but I know how personal attachment to an editor is.  
Given that, I suggest that you try things out.  Most editors offer some 
form of "demo".  Find what speaks to you and use that.

James Edward Gray II