LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[gautier_niouzes]

LEA is a Lightweight Editor for Ada.

(Currently for Windows, but is there are already everything on Linux or OS X, isn't it ?)

Features:
  - multi-document
  - multiple undo's & redo's
  - multi-line edit, rectangular selections
  - color themes, easy to switch
  - duplication of lines and selections
  - syntax highlighting
  - parenthesis matching
  - bookmarks

URL: https://sourceforge.net/projects/l-e-a/

This is a very early release (project is 1 month old), but LEA can already used as a simple Ada editor.
Comments, remarks, ideas, ... are welcome.

Enjoy!
Gautier

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[gautier_niouzes]

NB: for the current 0.5 version of LEA you need to download "lea v0.5.exe" and "SciLexer.dll" separately from that URL: https://sf.net/projects/l-e-a/files/ . This will be simplified later.

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[gautier_niouzes]

> NB: for the current 0.5 version of LEA you need to download "lea v0.5.exe" and "SciLexer.dll" separately from that URL: https://sf.net/projects/l-e-a/files/ . This will be simplified later.

Done - only the executable is needed now.

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[Stephen Leake]

On Saturday, November 4, 2017 at 2:11:55 PM UTC-5, gautier...@hotmail.com wrote:
> LEA is a Lightweight Editor for Ada.
> 
> (Currently for Windows, but is there are already everything on Linux or OS X, isn't it ?)

The editors that support Ada that I'm aware of are GPS and Emacs; both are available on Gnu/Linux and Microsoft Windows.

What is the rationale for another editor? what do you mean by "light-weight" and "script-like"?

Separate question; I gather "SciLexer.dll" is a lexer; where is the source for that (I'm always looking for a better lexer)?

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[Lucretia]

On Monday, 6 November 2017 10:17:37 UTC, Stephen Leake  wrote:

> Separate question; I gather "SciLexer.dll" is a lexer; where is the source for that (I'm always looking for a better lexer)?

Scintilla

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[gautier_niouzes]

> What is the rationale for another editor?

The best editor is the one you already know, so there are good chances you won't need LEA at all. It's clearly a personal and subjective matter. So I'll explain why *I* need LEA. I am using GPS and I am mostly happy with it. Same for Notepad++, but for other reasons. Actually I am using often both together and swap from one to the other. So basically my first goal is to replace Notepad++ (the way I am using it) by LEA, with a few things borrowed from AdaGIDE, like comment/uncomment buttons or reopening of files at the line they were closed; and a few improvements.

> what do you mean by "light-weight"

This alludes to somthing like Notepad++: quick start, responsitivity, possibility to work project-less.

> and "script-like"?

This is in the works, but for small programs you'll be able to punch a key and see the result immediately.

> Separate question; I gather "SciLexer.dll" is a lexer; where is the source for that (I'm always looking for a better lexer)?

SciLexer.dll is the (too modest) name for the Scintilla editor, which includes lexers for many programming languages. Actually SciLexer.dll contains the editor with full features. Sources @ http://scintilla.org/

G.

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[Stephen Leake]

On Monday, November 6, 2017 at 4:50:48 AM UTC-6, gautier...@hotmail.com wrote:
> > what do you mean by "light-weight"
> 
> This alludes to somthing like Notepad++: quick start, responsitivity, possibility to work project-less.

On a modern computer, do you actually notice the difference in startup time between Notepad++ and Emacs or GPS?

Emacs can be project-less or project-full.

Since the editors are multi-document, "startup" should really mean "open another file in the current editor instance"; why would you ever exit the editor?

> > and "script-like"?
> 
> This is in the works, but for small programs you'll be able to punch a key and see the result immediately.

That's "GUI", not "script". "script" (to me, anyway), means "a simple interpreted language".

What sort of results are you talking about? Compilation errors? reformatting? program output?

Emacs and GPS do all of those.
 

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On 06/11/2017 11:17, Stephen Leake wrote:

> Separate question; I gather "SciLexer.dll" is a lexer; where is the
> source for that (I'm always looking for a better lexer)?

Better lexer is no lexer! (:-))

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[Olivier Henley]

I find it very useful you are working on a replacement for Notepad++. I moved to SublimeText to edit everything that does not require a full-fledged IDE because responsiveness is mile ahead and the fusion of simplicity and flexibility is good.

Given the most important capabilities of Notepad++ and/or SublimeText, I would switch to LEA without a blink.

I also appreciate that the LEA code base will be, for me, a fantastic learning opportunity in regard to text editing architecture and techniques.

Arguably, general purpose, open source end user projects in Ada are rather rare... so Congrats Gauthier and a big thank you.

Olivier

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[Lionel Draghi]

> Separate question; I gather "SciLexer.dll" is a lexer; where is the source for that (I'm always looking for a better lexer)?

Hi Gautier,
 
I am also looking for a better lexer !

For archicheck https://github.com/LionelDraghi/ArchiCheck, I need a lib that is providing simple parsing functionnalities for commonly used language (I don't need to write a specific parser).

Archicheck is currently using OpenToken. The provided Ada lexer is OK, but the Java lexer is bugging (at first glance, on Javadocs comments, with @ characters).
I could probably fix it, but that would just postpone the problem : as I dont want to create (and maintain) a lexer, and OpenToken doesn't provides C++, C, etc. lexer, I am looking for something else.

I'm using scite on Linux, so I suppose that scintilla is at least available on Linux and Windows, and lots of languages are supported. It could match my needs.
Did you use the lexer lib directly, and is it worth considering it for my usage, in your opinion?

Thanks,

Lionel
  

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[gautier_niouzes]

Le vendredi 17 novembre 2017 23:28:08 UTC+1, Lionel Draghi a écrit :

> I'm using scite on Linux, so I suppose that scintilla is at least available on Linux and Windows, and lots of languages are supported. It could match my needs.
> Did you use the lexer lib directly, and is it worth considering it for my usage, in your opinion?

Hi Lionel,
I just use the Ada lexer built in Scintilla. My only contribution was to complement the keyword list for Ada 2012 (currently in package LEA_GWin.Editor).
G.

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[Olivier Henley]

I find it very useful you are working on a replacement for Notepad++. 

Thanks!

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[Stéphane Rivière]

Hi Gautier,

> LEA is a Lightweight Editor for Ada.
Very good news !

May be you should dig around Textadept (an open source scintilla based 
lite editor in LUA) for some ideas.

It has a lot of lexers files for many languages, almost ready to use (in 
LUA). Maybe you can also extract some algorithms from the source code...

One of its best feature is you can use it in graphical mode and also in 
text mode : one editor for desktop and ssh... It is now why its my 
editor of choice for GP uses...

All the best from Oleron Island...

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[Stephen Leake]

On Tuesday, November 7, 2017 at 3:41:01 AM UTC-6, Stéphane Rivière wrote:
> One of its best feature is you can use it in graphical mode and also in 
> text mode : one editor for desktop and ssh... 

Emacs has a text mode.

Or, if you can use X forwarding over ssh, Emacs works well in that mode as well. GPS might as well; I've never tried it.

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[Stéphane Rivière]

Hi Stefen,

>> One of its best feature is you can use it in graphical mode and also in
>> text mode : one editor for desktop and ssh...
> 
> Emacs has a text mode.

I loved Emacs (My OS is Emacs and Linux is its driver ;)
But I'm somewhat tired of (((()))) :)

I wrote (with the help of Textadept author) the Texinfo Lexer for 
Texadept (I use Texinfo for GNU like docs).

I must admit it was far easier to wrote (than a Emacs Lexer) and 
Textadept is soooo light... (still deeply customizable like Emacs)...

> Or, if you can use X forwarding over ssh, Emacs works well in that mode as well. 

Some apps behaved well with X forwarding, some others not...

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[Vincent]

Le samedi 4 novembre 2017 20:11:55 UTC+1, gautier...@hotmail.com a écrit :
> LEA is a Lightweight Editor for Ada.
> 
> (Currently for Windows, but is there are already everything on Linux or OS X, isn't it ?)
> 
A stupid question : why not Atom ?
https://atom.io/
Regards,

Vincent

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[gautier_niouzes]

Le mardi 14 novembre 2017 13:45:54 UTC+1, Vincent a écrit :

> A stupid question : why not Atom ?
> https://atom.io/

Looks cool! As said, there is no "best" editor, it's really a question of taste.

Now, trying to "sell" LEA :-)
I've downloaded and installed Atom 1.22 for win64 right now.
There are 5951 files installed, totaling 580MB!...
There are already too many of those bloatwares on my poor SSD, the free space is becoming scarce.
LEA has 1 (one) file (the other one, a .dll, is unpacked if needed). Size: 1.84MB. In a later version it will properly self-install, with no much more binary code...
Atom 1.22 does not recognize the Ada syntax. Bad! ( ;-) )
Did I miss the multiline edit and rectangular selection ?

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[Aurele]

Very nice, and handy editor Gautier.  Beats using NotePad.  Thanks for sharing!

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[Randy Brukardt]

<gautier_niouzes@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
news:6cb99cd9-b385-4793-b08c-2f87735787e3@googlegroups.com...
> LEA is a Lightweight Editor for Ada.

This looks very promising. It might even allow me to retire the circa 1986 
editor that I've been primarily using for programming since -- obviously --  
1986. (That's probably just a bit overdue. ;-)

One immediate concern: if LEA is given a file that contains tab characters, 
it ignores them completely, thus eliminating most or all of the indentation. 
I suppose I could open the file in my old editor first and manually 
eliminate the tabs, then use LEA after that, but that seems like a massive 
pain-in-the-a$$ (and it would mess up places where tabs are used in the 
middle of a construct, such as a table in a comment). It would be much 
better if I could specify somehow that any tabs in the source files used 8 
character indentation and the editor could do whatever it wants to preserve 
the look of the original file.

I tried the "quick help" button to see what the editor is supposed to do 
(rather than trial-and-error), but nothing seemed to happen except a brief 
pause in my computer's responsiveness.

I'll try this more seriously another day (gottta do actual work now ;-).

                                        Randy.

P.S. I've posted it on AdaIC.

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[gautier_niouzes]

Le jeudi 16 novembre 2017 01:44:37 UTC+1, Randy Brukardt a écrit :

Hi Randy,

Actually tabs are preserved. You can see them with the "Show special symbols" menu command (or the paragraph button). They are just displayed too short. If you choose 8 as indentation it will (hopefully) work exactly as the DOS tabs.
I see I should dissociate tab size setting and indentation setting...
I hope I can retrieve an Ada.Text_IO tool which got rid of all tabs - correctly...
Otherwise Notepad++ provides such conversions (I've not tested).

> P.S. I've posted it on AdaIC.

Thanks!
G.

Re: LEA - Lightweight Editor for Ada - First (early) binary release, v 0.5.

[gautier_niouzes]

Randy:

> I tried the "quick help" button to see what the editor is supposed to do 
> (rather than trial-and-error), but nothing seemed to happen except a brief 
> pause in my computer's responsiveness.

The latest version (0.61) shows now some help on "quick help" menu, or F1 key.
Of course it doesn't guarantee it is the needed or a helpful help ;-).
Feedback is welcome...