On Apr 25, 2006, at 9:20 PM, John Gabriele wrote:

> On 4/25/06, Ryan Leavengood <leavengood / gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 4/25/06, SleepJunk13 <SleepJunk13 / gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I know of RadRails. I use it to work on my Rails apps, but it's  
>>> testing
>>> and debugging isn't great. I don't need rails support in what I'm  
>>> doing.
>>> Just a nice ruby editor.
>>
>> Myself and a lot of other people swear by VIM (www.vim.org) for Ruby
>> editing and for most other editing. It can take a while to learn, but
>> once you do it is extremely powerful. It is also available on just
>> about every OS you can imagine. Today at work I did Java coding on
>> Windows using VIM, then just now I did some Ruby coding on Windows at
>> home, and later I'll be coding C++ on BeOS using VIM. I started using
>> it on Linux.
>
> I've been using vim for light stuff for a while now, but it seems
> inconsistent to me, and has been difficult to get used to. That is,
> commands can take a number of different forms:
>
> :set foo
> :foo on
> nfoo
> :%foo
>
> Plus there's some commands you hit while in command mode, but then
> others with ctrl characters while in insert mode (like Ctrl-d). Wait
> though -- there's also some ctrl chars while in command mode too.
>

Can't argue with that

> Besides that, in general I find myself slowed down constantly hitting
> Ctrl-[, forgetting whether I'm in command mode or not. Either that, or
> I'm filling my files with ":w" or ">>" or "i", "b", "w"...
>
You're in command mode unless the bottom says
--INSERT--
or
--VISUAL--

I find ESC to be much faster than Ctrl-[, YMMV.


> Regarding FreeRIDE, I think development on it has slowed lately
> because they're working on getting wxRuby together. I believe that
> future versions of FreeRIDE will probably use wxWidgets instead of
> FOX.
>
>> Plus once you know VIM you'll be able to use the standard vi  
>> installed
>> on most Unixes (though you'll miss all the nice VIM features.)
>>
>
> What tends to keep me coming back is vim's smart syntax highlighting.
> It guesses how to syntax highlight different system config files very
> well.
>
> That said, on the desktop, so far, I've found NEdit to be most useful.
>