[Info-vax] VMS editor uncommon option

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 11/4/2024 6:19 AM, Marc Van Dyck wrote:
> Arne Vajhøj was thinking very hard :
>> So I did a first attempt on DCL, VMS Pascal and VMS Basic
>> support.
>>
>> https://www.vajhoej.dk/arne/vmsstuff/jedit/
>>
>> has some instructions in content.txt and a
>> jedit-bundle.zip with everything.
>>
>> Not everybody likes JEdit, but modern GUI editors
>> for VMS is not exactly a crowded space. :-)
> 
> A naïve question : I have never been exposed, I must admit, to "modern
> GUI editors". What more do they have to offer compared to, for example,
> good old DECWindows LSE (with EDT keypad of course) ? Could you try to
> convince me ?

I don't know if I can convince you that JEdit is great.

Maybe I can convince you that it is worth trying out.

First a caveat. I don’t have much experience with LSE. I have seen both
the VT interface and the DECWindows interface. But I never liked LSE. I
was always an EVE person on VMS. My clear impression is that LSE was a
good product in its time, but it has not evolved for 30+ years.

Next the editor vs IDE discussion. I see it more as scale than as two
buckets. So if I were to put various editors/IDE's on the scale it
would be:

editor <------------------------------------> IDE
EDT    EVE   JEdit    LSE     VSCode      Eclipse

Nice features in JEdit:
* Support multiple horizontal and vertical split of screen.
* Syntax coloring for a ton of languages - both old and new.
* The BufferTabs plugin (as opposed to the builtin buffer switcher) is
   pretty nice for working with lots of open files.
* The JDiff plugin makes it easy to see difference in two files
   side by side with color highlighting.
* Can read and write files in all sorts of encodings.
* Can convert tab characters to spaces.
* Bracket matching.
* Smart indent.
* The XML plugin does nice auto complete for XML and HTML
* There is a FTP/SFTP plugin to allow access to remote files. I have
   never liked that though - I always prefer to edit locally and then
   FTP/SFTP.
* Anyone that has used a recent editor/IDE/wordprocessor on PC can
   use JEdit. It comes with documentation, but there is really
   no reason to read it. Menus, icons, right click context menu are
   mostly as expected. I probably only use 20% of the functionality -
   lots left to investigate, but if I need something I find it in the
   menus.
* Same UI on Windows, Linux, VMS, macOS, FreeBSD etc. (on
   Windows and various *nix there are lots of editors to pick from,
   but on VMS the offerings are more limited)

There may not be many "must have" features, but I think there are a lot
of "nice to have" features.

Not so nice things with JEdit:
* Slow startup time – so keep it open and close and open files
   from within.
* Rather ugly font.
* Default RFM is STMLF not VAR.

But besides all the objective pros and cons then editor choice also has
a significant subjective aspect – some may love it – some may hate it.

If you are in the market for a graphical editor on VMS, then it seems
obvious to give JEdit a try and see if you like it or not. Worst case
is that you don’t like it and you have wasted an hour or two of
your time.

Arne