Monday, May 30, 2011

Want TextMate for Linux? Use kate!

Let's go through TextMate features with Kate in mind:

Ability to Search and Replace in a Project

That Eclipse-like goodie is actually better left to really powerful bash > find | sed && awk scripts. Otherwise you hit a wall rather sooner than later.

Auto-Indent for Common Actions Like Pasting Text

That of course is simply wrong thing to do. Usually one needs to guess what editor did and fix it manually. But kate has it of course if you insist.

Auto-Pairing of Brackets and Other Characters

Kate has it. Emacs has it. Vim has it. Basic prerequisite for any programming text tool.

Clipboard History

That would be cool. Oh wait, KDE has that..

Column Selections and Column Typing

Impressive but totally useless.

Completion of Words from Current Document

Kate has it.

CSS-like Selectors to Pinpoint the Scope of Actions and Settings

What? You know local scope for programming language you didn't know existed? How?

Declarative Language Grammars for Graceful Mixing and Hacking

Kate has it and even more. It has API for scripting: http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdesdk/kate/plugins.html

Dynamic Outline for Working With Multiple Files

Kate is also very good with multiple files.

Expand Trigger Words to Code Blocks With Tab-able Placeholders

You should avoid programming language that needs this feature often. You'd be better off. Actually doing that breaks DRY principle - you should add a method/macro to your code instead of repeating it.

File Tabs when Working With Projects

Tabify Kate pluging

Foldable Code Blocks

Classic. Kate has it.

Function Pop-up for Quick Overview and Navigation

This is actually better than in Kate. I miss it.

Plug-able Through Your Favorite Scripting Language

As said above, Kate is scriptable both from KDE and via Kate plugins.

Recordable Macros With No Programming Required

As iMacros prooves it, this is wrong path. Macros needs programming to be useful. Otherwise they just break DRY principle as above.

Regular Expression Search and Replace (grep)

I'd bet my money Kate has world-class support for regexp (positional, grouping) here. I've changed original text:
    * Ability to Search and Replace in a Project
    * Auto-Indent for Common Actions Like Pasting Text
    * Auto-Pairing of Brackets and Other Characters
to HTML H4 headers:
<h4>Ability to Search and Replace in a Project</h4>
<h4>Auto-Indent for Common Actions Like Pasting Text</h4>
<h4>Auto-Pairing of Brackets and Other Characters</h4>
By replace
    \* (.*)
with
<h4>\1</h4>

Run Shell Commands from Within a Document

Sure, type them without readline, without Ctrl+R history? Useless.

Support for Darcs, Perforce, SVK, and Subversion

Cool names. What do they do? Oh, you mean syntax highlihting? Kate has it. As for subversion: Integrating code revision control systems into text editor takes from you the power of text console. If you don't like console, you should work on it.

Support for More Than 50 Languages

Only 50?

Switch Between Files in Projects With a Minimum of Key Strokes

Kate beats strokes with one stroke (Alt+arrow).

Themable Syntax Highlight Colors

Kate has it.

Visual Bookmarks to Jump Between Places in a File

That is killer feature of Kate. It actually made me think TextMate is somewhat based on Kate.

Works As External Editor for (s)ftp Programs

With kate -u switch (use existing kate instance) you get to work on any project incredibly fast.

Works Together With Xcode and Can Build Xcode Projects

Cool, but I like both make and maven for a build system.

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