Fresh view of text editors – command and graphical variations

[Brian MasinickModerator]

I used the xnedit editor, also could have used geany, to easily cut and paste the order of my PATH entries today.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

Brian Masinick wrote:

I used the xnedit editor, also could have used geany, to easily cut and paste the order of my PATH entries today.

I have used both of these editors over the past day and they are both effective for general editing and definitely any antiX content.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

I did my final round of alterations on my Dell Inspiron 5558 using nvim, geany and xnedit to do various changes. All done updating and reconfiguring all of my computers, thanks to these flexible, powerful editors.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

I installed Adrian’s respin of MX Linux with an Arch base; it ran live fine but I couldn’t get it to run properly installed so I reinstalled MX Linux 25.1 and I’ve been reconfiguring it today using combinations of Emacs, Geany, and xnedit to keep my fingers in practice. Got it all going again so those editor practice sessions are working out well.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

Today I am using the Doom Emacs Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

https://www.rahuljuliato.com/posts/compiling_emacs_30_1
is a very good article on compiling GNU Emacs 30.1 on Debian-based systems.

I adapted it to my purposes and did it for GNU Emacs 30.2.

Make sure you have deb-src enabled for Debian and Debian Security repos.

I followed these steps:

mkdir ~/emacs_build
cd ~/emacs_build
wget -c https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/emacs/emacs-30.2.tar.gz
sha256sum emacs-30.2.tar.gz
tar xvfz emacs-30.2.tar.gz
cd emacs-30.2

AMENDED: (removed –with-pgtk and –with-gtk and it’s now perfect).
NOTE: ALL of the ./configure options have two dashes in front of the argument
and one dash between multi worded options.

sudo apt-get build-dep emacs # This REALLY helped; had problems without this step!
./configure –prefix=/usr –with-native-compilation=aot –with-tree-sitter –with-gif\
–with-png –with-jpeg –with-rsvg –with-tiff

( I omitted these; you can include them if you wish: -with-imagemagick –with-mailutils ).

Start by cleaning any older building with:

make clean
Now we actually run make with:

make -j8

This will compile Emacs by allowing 8 jobs at once. You can leave make with only -j flag for infinite jobs or customize at will with a number. ( I did make -j8). I did it AGAIN and removed –with-gtk and changed the make to make -j11. That worked too!

Now I have a nice version of GNU Emacs that’s up to date AND can be used with Doom Emacs.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

Brian Masinick wrote:

https://www.rahuljuliato.com/posts/compiling_emacs_30_1
is a very good article on compiling GNU Emacs 30.1 on Debian-based systems.

I adapted it to my purposes and did it for GNU Emacs 30.2.

Make sure you have deb-src enabled for Debian and Debian Security repos.

I followed these steps:

mkdir ~/emacs_build
cd ~/emacs_build
wget -c https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/emacs/emacs-30.2.tar.gz
sha256sum emacs-30.2.tar.gz
tar xvfz emacs-30.2.tar.gz
cd emacs-30.2

AMENDED: (removed –with-pgtk and –with-gtk and it’s now perfect).
NOTE: ALL of the ./configure options have two dashes in front of the argument
and one dash between multi worded options.

sudo apt-get build-dep emacs # This REALLY helped; had problems without this step!
./configure –prefix=/usr –with-native-compilation=aot –with-tree-sitter –with-gif\
–with-png –with-jpeg –with-rsvg –with-tiff

( I omitted these; you can include them if you wish: -with-imagemagick –with-mailutils ).

Start by cleaning any older building with:

make clean
Now we actually run make with:

make -j8

This will compile Emacs by allowing 8 jobs at once. You can leave make with only -j flag for infinite jobs or customize at will with a number. ( I did make -j8). I did it AGAIN and removed –with-gtk and changed the make to make -j11. That worked too!

Now I have a nice version of GNU Emacs that’s up to date AND can be used with Doom Emacs.

I performed my updated recipe for Slackware and had it completed in a few minutes. I really don’t need to rebuild Emacs for either Endeavour OS or Slackware but the fact that it built quickly and correctly indicates that I got the steps done correctly and they work on other distributions which is what I wanted to determine.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

Ever since completing the compilation of Emacs 30.2 the new version has worked quite well – and as far as I can tell, I did so in such a way that I didn’t drag in systemD code – had I used the sudo apt-get build-dep emacs step it WOULD have introduced libsystemd-dev, so I OMITTED it!

XnEdit has not had any changes in over a year, and Neovim had some changes, but is holding at the moment at Version 0.12.2 while Version 0.13 is providing any incremental changes. All of these editors are functioning well right now.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

I’m using the helix text editor and as usual it’s reliable and steady.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

Today I haven’t done any common text editing yet (other than in this forum text widget), but I have opened my “regular personal tool” – Doom Emacs – to verify and confirm that recent and current updates are functioning.
Of course it still functions beautifully, and Doom Emacs, believe it or not, is slightly MORE efficient than GNU Emacs – because it has a combination of features, several of which have been rewritten from previous Emacs Lisp code, and those rewrites were aimed at two objectives: one, to provide a stronger, easier to use user interface, combining a Space leader key with a combination of vi-based user keys, PLUS the ability to continue to use GNU Emacs keystrokes OR user customized keystrokes.

It’s this great flexibility COMBINED with one of the most complete Integrated Development Environment (IDE) configurations around. That, as much as the outstanding editor features are why I use GNU Emacs, and now Doom Emacs. As a retiree, do I need it? Not at all; I hardly use 95% of the features but it’s familiar to me; during my years working on the UNIX operating system it was my primary development tool; even file check in, check out facilities were available.

For those of us who DO NOT have that background, may I recommend Geany to you? It is also an IDE, but it’s a light IDE, VERY simple to use, arguably as simple, maybe even simpler, than our very light editor, nano. I recommend Geany for anyone who doesn’t already have their own favorite editor/IDE. The reason I recommend it is that it is STILL very capable, and yet it doesn’t require a lot of reading and studying to be able to type, write, or alter what’s already been written.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

My text editors and IDE images have not changed much recently so I’ve just checked Doom Emacs today so far; no change. Neovim has not changed. XnEdit has not changed except for a few updates that have not been issued as a new version since 2025. I downloaded a fresh image just to see if anything at all has changed; probably not.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

Today I am using the Gvim text editor on Slackware Linux. Version 9.2.0500 was updated today.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

I’m editing with one of the favorite editors of @PDP-8, the old Joe editor, which has Pico, Wordstar, and Emacs key binding options. I’m using the standard key bindings to write this particular note.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

Brian Masinick wrote:

My text editors and IDE images have not changed much recently so I’ve just checked Doom Emacs today so far; no change. Neovim has not changed. XnEdit has not changed except for a few updates that have not been issued as a new version since 2025. I downloaded a fresh image just to see if anything at all has changed; probably not.

This was true first thing this morning.
Ran Doom Emacs to double check just in case any configuration changes get messed up. That rarely happens and it’s fine again this morning.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

Just used Geany to double check some files.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Author]

Posts