From: "Iain 'Spoon' Truskett" <spoon / dellah.org>

>
> Well, it is meant to be an IDE tailored for Ruby. v/e are generic
> editors. I get to edit any sort of file. I'm not saying I'm against
> IDEs, just that I favour consistency between editing different types of
> files. Once one learns an editor and has used it for some time one
> becomes used to its quirks. The number of times I've pressed Esc while
> entering form data on a web page and thus succeeded in wiping what I've
> just written is ridiculous (thus w3m and Webite get points for having
> textareas edited in one's $EDITOR).

The number of times I've hit ^W (delete word in insert mode in Vim) while
editing something in Internet Explorer (where ^W == close window) ...

> > It's always annoyning when keybindings are different for standard
> > navigation, and for those not customed with ctrl+x etc. for copy paste
> > etc.  different bindings would be nice.
>
> Not just standard navigation, but routine tasks. Someone used to vi(m)
> expects modal editing. They expect the : command line, and for the
> commands one is used to to work. A transition to a 'better' way is fine,
> but an abrupt switch could be painful.

I've coded 2500 lines of Java in the last six days, and it works.  The reason?
IntelliJ.  AFAIC, nothing could ever be a better text editor than Vim, and
IntelliJ doesn't come close.  But Vim doesn't understand Java.  IntelliJ does,
and it is 1000 times better at coding Java than Vim is.  IntelliJ can do
very-high-level things - automatically include "import" statements, rename
classes, methods, variables (with all usages - and ONLY usages - renamed),
extract methods from blocks of code, create methods from usage, create iterator
templates, extract interfaces/superclasses from existing classes, inline a
method/variable, alert you to all kinds of errors, move classes to different
packages, handle CVS, ...

Long story short: using IntelliJ, I *manage* code more than *write* it.  And
thanks to its "external tools" support, when I need some raw editing power, I
hit ALT-V and it opens the current file in Vim at the current line number.

My unsolicited advice to the FreeRIDE team: keep up the good work.  Concentrate
on the ability to do very high-level things with Ruby code, and the editing
details will be immaterial.  As I've mentioned in an earlier post, much of the
brilliance of IntelliJ relies on Java's type system, but seeing as automatic
refactoring began with Smalltalk, I'm sure there's potential for Ruby.

Gavin