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I agree. Another reasons why I prefer GUI are auto complete, tooltips and context menus. Also for some documents like xml, also when working with other people’

I agree. Another reasons why I prefer GUI are auto complete, tooltips and context menus. Also for some documents like xml, also when working with other people’s code, I find it useful to collapse/expand blocks of text. All these features pretty much require a GUI-based editor.

sid-kap 9y ago
Spacemacs has excellent context menus. It was suprising how discoverable everything is!
yorwba 9y ago
There are vim plugins for auto-completion and it supports code folding out of the box. I'm not sure what you use tooltips and context menus for, but that functionality is probably available via some : command. But then most command-line editors are actually GUIs in the terminal with excellent keyboard support.
- Const-me 9y ago
  > I'm not sure what you use tooltips They show documentation (pulled from comments) for functions, classes and arguments. > and context menus For context-sensitive commands I use once per week or less often, so I don’t bother memorizing keyboard shortcuts for them. > most command-line editors are actually GUIs in the terminal Most developers don’t use command line editors. Here’s recent data from this year: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018#development-environments-and-tools https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018#development-e... As you see, 4 most popular editors are VS Code, Visual Studio, Notepad++ and Sublime Text, all of them are GUI applications. Only 26% developers use Vim, 4% Emacs.
  - oblio 9y ago
    Those stats are also probably skewed in favor of people actually bothering to fill their survey. Those are more likely to be active/proactive, which in my experience is correlated with tinkering with tools (ergo, using Vim or Emacs).
    - dmitriid 9y ago
      > Those stats are also probably skewed in favor of people actually bothering to fill their survey. Those are more likely to be active/proactive, which in my experience is correlated with tinkering with tools (ergo, using Vim or Emacs). and yet: > Most developers don’t use command line editors. Here’s recent data from this year: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018#development-e.. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018#development-e.... As you see, 4 most popular editors are VS Code, Visual Studio, Notepad++ and Sublime Text, all of them are GUI applications. Only 26% developers use Vim, 4% Emacs.
      - oblio 9y ago
        My point that those stats are not necessarily representative of the general population in that CLI editors are used by even less people than listed there. In my personal experience maybe 1% of the developers I know use them as their primary editors. They maybe edit some stuff with them on remote Unix systems, if you can call i<change some stuff>:wq real editing :)
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
milesrout 9y ago
vim supports all of those things out of the box, both in GUI mode (gvim/MacVim) and terminal mode (vim). Emacs supports all of those things out of the box as well.
eadmund 9y ago
Those features are available in emacs, and work in both the GUI and the terminal. For auto-complete, vanilla emacs has dynamic abbreviations; there are several packages for fancier auto-completion; company-mode, for example, works just fine in the terminal, as well of course as in the GUI (X11, macOS or Windows). Likewise with tooltips, which in the terminal generally are generally displayed in a special region of the terminal instead. Likewise with context menus, which can be shown just fine in a VT100 terminal. Likewise with expanding & collapsing text ('folding'). Org-mode, to take just one example, is built on folding — and is easily one of modern emacs's killer features. Seriously, give emacs a shot. Both Prelude & spacemacs are excellent configs for it.
- Const-me 9y ago
  > give emacs a shot. Both Prelude & spacemacs are excellent configs for it. Are there any advantages over Visual Studio + Visual Assist, for C++ or C# languages? Because I see many disadvantages. About text editor features, your workarounds have flaws compared to good GUI. For tooltips, that special region of the terminal is physically separate from the cursor. For folding, a separate, visually distinct indicators of what’s folded/unfolded help navigating the code faster. Another text editor feature hard to do in text mode is spell checking for strings and comments. Color is already used for syntax highlighting, so wavy red underlines come handy. But visual studio is more than an editor, it includes a build system, debuggers and profilers, package manager, and many more related features. Everything comes already integrated and just works out of the box.
  - oblio 9y ago
    Terminals do have rich text, I have to point that out. Not conhost, the default one on Windows (though I think the latest Windows update might have it). So you can have underline, bold, italic, squiggles, I think even strikethrough. Also you can have tooltip "windows" but since they're harder to create and manage few applications use them. Those that do are generally based on ncurses, a library for TUI (think Norton Commander or Turbo Pascal) Vim even has a spell checker built in. What the terminal does not have is usually consistent support because terminal emulators are really shady, there's no actual standard (most just do what xterm does). For the TUI thing, there's also no real conventions plus I'm pretty sure both Vim and Emacs don't use ncurses and roll their own (see: lack of consistency). You also need to cobble things together out of packages with varying degrees of quality and documentation, from long forgotten wikis and 90's pages belongings to ex post-docs.
icebraining 9y ago
> tooltips Tooltips work in the terminal, they're just text after all. See Vim + YouCompleteMe (which, as the name indicates, also provides auto-complete): https://camo.githubusercontent.com/1f3f922431d5363224b20e99467ff28b04e810e2/687474703a2f2f692e696d6775722e636f6d2f304f50346f6f642e676966 https://camo.githubusercontent.com/1f3f922431d5363224b20e994... > I find it useful to collapse/expand blocks of text For that you don't even need plugins, folding has been a standard feature for many years
Lio 9y ago
There doesn't seem to be anything about those features that makes them require a GUI. e.g. I'm using ZSH specifically for it's command line autocomplete stuff. Emacs has helm for context narrowing and really good support for context menus. Vim will let you collapse/expand blocks of text including in XML using a mouse in a terminal window. For spelling errors Vim will give you an straight red underline in the terminal and squiggly underline in its "GUI" versions. I assume that Emacs is the same. I'm not suggesting you leave VS by the way. I'm just saying that your GUI only examples aren't GUI only.

sid-kap 9y ago

Spacemacs has excellent context menus. It was suprising how discoverable everything is!

yorwba 9y ago

There are vim plugins for auto-completion and it supports code folding out of the box. I'm not sure what you use tooltips and context menus for, but that functionality is probably available via some : command. But then most command-line editors are actually GUIs in the terminal with excellent keyboard support.

Const-me 9y ago
> I'm not sure what you use tooltips They show documentation (pulled from comments) for functions, classes and arguments. > and context menus For context-sensitive commands I use once per week or less often, so I don’t bother memorizing keyboard shortcuts for them. > most command-line editors are actually GUIs in the terminal Most developers don’t use command line editors. Here’s recent data from this year: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018#development-environments-and-tools https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018#development-e... As you see, 4 most popular editors are VS Code, Visual Studio, Notepad++ and Sublime Text, all of them are GUI applications. Only 26% developers use Vim, 4% Emacs.
- oblio 9y ago
  Those stats are also probably skewed in favor of people actually bothering to fill their survey. Those are more likely to be active/proactive, which in my experience is correlated with tinkering with tools (ergo, using Vim or Emacs).
  - dmitriid 9y ago
    > Those stats are also probably skewed in favor of people actually bothering to fill their survey. Those are more likely to be active/proactive, which in my experience is correlated with tinkering with tools (ergo, using Vim or Emacs). and yet: > Most developers don’t use command line editors. Here’s recent data from this year: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018#development-e.. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018#development-e.... As you see, 4 most popular editors are VS Code, Visual Studio, Notepad++ and Sublime Text, all of them are GUI applications. Only 26% developers use Vim, 4% Emacs.
    - oblio 9y ago
      My point that those stats are not necessarily representative of the general population in that CLI editors are used by even less people than listed there. In my personal experience maybe 1% of the developers I know use them as their primary editors. They maybe edit some stuff with them on remote Unix systems, if you can call i<change some stuff>:wq real editing :)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

milesrout 9y ago

vim supports all of those things out of the box, both in GUI mode (gvim/MacVim) and terminal mode (vim). Emacs supports all of those things out of the box as well.

eadmund 9y ago

Those features are available in emacs, and work in both the GUI and the terminal. For auto-complete, vanilla emacs has dynamic abbreviations; there are several packages for fancier auto-completion; company-mode, for example, works just fine in the terminal, as well of course as in the GUI (X11, macOS or Windows). Likewise with tooltips, which in the terminal generally are generally displayed in a special region of the terminal instead. Likewise with context menus, which can be shown just fine in a VT100 terminal. Likewise with expanding & collapsing text ('folding'). Org-mode, to take just one example, is built on folding — and is easily one of modern emacs's killer features. Seriously, give emacs a shot. Both Prelude & spacemacs are excellent configs for it.

Const-me 9y ago
> give emacs a shot. Both Prelude & spacemacs are excellent configs for it. Are there any advantages over Visual Studio + Visual Assist, for C++ or C# languages? Because I see many disadvantages. About text editor features, your workarounds have flaws compared to good GUI. For tooltips, that special region of the terminal is physically separate from the cursor. For folding, a separate, visually distinct indicators of what’s folded/unfolded help navigating the code faster. Another text editor feature hard to do in text mode is spell checking for strings and comments. Color is already used for syntax highlighting, so wavy red underlines come handy. But visual studio is more than an editor, it includes a build system, debuggers and profilers, package manager, and many more related features. Everything comes already integrated and just works out of the box.
- oblio 9y ago
  Terminals do have rich text, I have to point that out. Not conhost, the default one on Windows (though I think the latest Windows update might have it). So you can have underline, bold, italic, squiggles, I think even strikethrough. Also you can have tooltip "windows" but since they're harder to create and manage few applications use them. Those that do are generally based on ncurses, a library for TUI (think Norton Commander or Turbo Pascal) Vim even has a spell checker built in. What the terminal does not have is usually consistent support because terminal emulators are really shady, there's no actual standard (most just do what xterm does). For the TUI thing, there's also no real conventions plus I'm pretty sure both Vim and Emacs don't use ncurses and roll their own (see: lack of consistency). You also need to cobble things together out of packages with varying degrees of quality and documentation, from long forgotten wikis and 90's pages belongings to ex post-docs.

icebraining 9y ago

> tooltips Tooltips work in the terminal, they're just text after all. See Vim + YouCompleteMe (which, as the name indicates, also provides auto-complete): https://camo.githubusercontent.com/1f3f922431d5363224b20e99467ff28b04e810e2/687474703a2f2f692e696d6775722e636f6d2f304f50346f6f642e676966 https://camo.githubusercontent.com/1f3f922431d5363224b20e994... > I find it useful to collapse/expand blocks of text For that you don't even need plugins, folding has been a standard feature for many years

Lio 9y ago

There doesn't seem to be anything about those features that makes them require a GUI. e.g. I'm using ZSH specifically for it's command line autocomplete stuff. Emacs has helm for context narrowing and really good support for context menus. Vim will let you collapse/expand blocks of text including in XML using a mouse in a terminal window. For spelling errors Vim will give you an straight red underline in the terminal and squiggly underline in its "GUI" versions. I assume that Emacs is the same. I'm not suggesting you leave VS by the way. I'm just saying that your GUI only examples aren't GUI only.