[pythonvis] Re: Text editors
- From: "Octavian Rasnita" <orasnita@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <pythonvis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 6 May 2014 21:17:47 +0300
That advantage of announcing the indent levels in EdSharp is very insignificant
because Jaws can be configured to do that in all editors.
Control+F2, Settings Center, type "indent" in the search field, arrow down,
press space to check "say indented characters" check box.
The difference between using a non-unicode aware editor and Windows Notepad, is
that Notepad supports Unicode, so it can save the text correctly.
Even in America there are cities names and person names that contain special
chars that may be used. They may be copied from another source, like a web
page, and if the editor doesn't support Unicode, those chars will be replaced
with question marks or other incorrect chars when they are pasted in the editor.
It is a good idea to give simple English names to variables and functions and
not use diacritics, but sometimes the programmers might need to use special
chars in strings, or in regular expressions because it would be more simple
than to use the Unicode code for those special chars. But they won't be able to
do that if they'd use an Unicode non-aware editor.
And the blind programmers may need to use the source code created by others,
for learning, for improving it or if they work in a team. And if others used
some Unicode chars in their source, they will be replaced with question marks
if the source code will be loaded in an editor that can't support Unicode.
So I think it is not a good idea to promote an editor with so many
"disabilities" like EdSharp. :-)
--Octavian
----- Original Message -----
From: Jeffrey Turner
To: pythonvis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2014 5:02 PM
Subject: [pythonvis] Re: Text editors
Hello Zahari,
Thank you for your comments about text editors. Can you clarify one point for
me?
As beginners (some of us Jaws users), the EdSharp editor has some significant
advantages for us, like announcing indent levels automatically as we arrow up
and down through the lines of code. I can see the drawback of not having
Unicode included, but as a beginner, I have no aspiration to have anything I
write translated into other languages. In the event that this is a requirement
someday down the line though, what is keeping someone from taking my code, and
editing it using an editor that does support Unicode? Why would this be any
different from someone taking a *.txt file created in Notepad and modifying it
using Word or any other editor?
It seems like the lack of Unicode support is not relevant to the needs of
many of us. Am I missing something here?
JDog
From: pythonvis-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pythonvis-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Zahari Yurukov
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2014 9:07 PM
To: pythonvis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [pythonvis] Re: Text editors
Hi,
I very much appreciate this initiative and I'm reading your letters with big
interest.
I have some experiance with PHP, and very little knowledge in Python, but I
want to learn and to share that what I've learned with others.
I think that Unicode support is essential for a text editor these days.
Even if you are an English speaker, you probably will want your program to be
translated in other languages some day. And I can assure you, that dealing with
different encodings is a hell.
Unicode contains not only different alphabets, but many other symbols, too.
So you would like your program to be written in unicode, and that's why you
need a unicode editor.
It is very disturbing that the developer of EdSharp refuses to include
unicode support.
Also, wouldn't it be harder for a beginner to remember hundrets of
keystrokes, instead of using standard text navigation and manipulation commands?
I personally prefer Notepad++ for everything, but I'm NVDA user.
For JAWS users, why don't you try UltraEdit. I havn't use JAWS for many years
now, but I think it should be accessible, though I can't guarantee (just an
idea).
P.S. M$ Notepad is the worst text editor ever - please don't use it, grin.
Best wishes,
Zahari
На 27.04.2014 17:30, Richard Dinger написа:
You should use a text editor to write programs. Word processing programs
like M$ Word or Wordpad do not work well because they include extra display and
format information that will only confuse the Python compiler. This is true
for any programming language, not just Python.
There is an endless debate among programmers about which is the best
language and another endless debate over which is the best text editor. You
must select the editor you will use, based on your own preferences.
Here is a list of text editors that I have seen recommended by visually
impaired programmers:
- M$ Notepad (bare bones editor comes with windows)
- Notepad++ (free download many advanced features)
- Notepad2 (free download many advanced features)
- Textpad (not free many advanced features)
- EdSharp (free download many advanced features very blind friendly)
The Notepad editor that comes with windows is bare bones, but I used it for
many years just because it was simple and easy to use. One drawback is that
Notepad is not “language aware” , that is it has no Python specific features or
the ability to run the script being edited.
I think the others listed above all have some language specific features,
but I am not knowledgeable enough to list them here. Read through their
respective websites to get more details.
The EdSharp editor is recommended on our web page, but is not required.
EdSharp can be configured for Python and can run scripts from within the
editor. There are several Python specific features that will make your study
of Python a little easier.
Richard
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