August 7, 2008

Editra - Nice Python Editor

I just saw this post about Editra from Flávio Codeço Coelho:
Editra: a Great New Python Editor

I downloaded it and was VERY impressed. For Python programming, I don't use a full blown IDE. I prefer a cross-platform text editor with syntax highlighting and integrated shell that works well on Windows and Linux.

I have been using SciTE as my programmer's editor for several years now; going back to my days as a Perl programmer. I have never seen an editor that rivals SciTE (shut up VIM freaks :)

Well, Editra just might be that editor. It is only in an Alpha stage, but is very useful and packs most of the features I want including autocomplete (which SciTE lacks).

I will definitely be keeping an eye on this editor as its development progresses.

http://editra.org/

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

scite has autocompletion, you just have to enable it ( http://scintilla.sourceforge.net/SciTEFAQ.html#Autocomplete ) though i don't know why anyone would want to when you can just use emacs :)

Corey Goldberg said...

yes I know about that feature in SciTE but its not what I am looking for. I want to hit a dot after an object reference and have it tell me all available methods I can use.

saves me time reading Python docs.

Anonymous said...

I used to coding with kate, then, two weeks ago I found Komodo edit .

It's free and you can write macros with javascript or python. Very impresive!

Chris Arndt said...

I also use SciTE a lot, because it is fast, works on Win+Linux and has most of the features I need. There is automcompletion for the symbols in the Python Standard Library, but you have to build the python.api file first with this script and put it in the "api" subfolder of your scite directory. It doesn't work as good as in other IDEs though, for example it works only one level deep, e.g. typing 'os.path.' doesn't give you the symbols from the submodule.

Recently I started using Komodo IDE, since I got a license for free. I must say that I love the online syntax checking and I hardly can live without it anymore ;) I don't use many of the IDE features, so I guess Komodo Edit would be sufficient for me too. You should have 1Gb minimum of memory though, with less the program feels too sluggish.

Corey Goldberg said...

I tried Komodo Edit. it looks pretty sweet. Though I couldn't figure out how to run programs directly from the editor (like hit F5 in most editors/IDE's).

Maybe I just need to RTFM, but I can't use an editor without that.

thanks for the heads up on the scite tip for Python autocomplete.. I'll add that soon!

Anonymous said...

What about the PyDev plugin for Eclipse? I understand that provides a debugger and interactive shell.

Anonymous said...

I use Eclipse + Pydev on a daily basis and must say it works great. Especially if you also configure it to use pylint.

Then you get warnings like "unused parameter" as you are writing the function, all integrated in the IDE.

CoderZh said...

Why not try WingIDE, it is so great!