|
There are several text editors available for programming in Ruby but there has to a criteria with the help of which we can always select the best and the most feasible text editor in a way to ease up the programming and make it a fun for the developers.
There are few features which will help the developer to make the right decision for the best editor for programming.
The few of them are listed below:
1. Proper Highlighting of Syntax.
2.Proper indentation.
3.Integrated Command Line.
The choice of editors depends quite a lot on the coding habits of the programmers and developers.Choosing the right editor for Ruby programming should always be given the right importance as it directly affects the productivity of coding.
A developer can always code using notepad too in ruby as its quite easy and simple to be used but it has also its limitations as we can’t get syntax highlighting, macros etc which are quite important when it comes to making coding quite a fun for the programmers. The editors also help programmers save good amount of time by creating macros and shortcuts which are implemented frequently in coding.
Although it always remains the empire of the programmer to make a decision on the editors it is recommended that the editor should at least support the syntax highlighting in ruby as it helps to differentiate between the keywords. A good choice for Ruby editor can be Emacs, too.
We will now have a look on few editors in brief:
1.Emacs 2.VIM 3.Text Pad 4. ArachnoRuby
1. Emacs: It is quite simple in configuration. Not only this we also get the flexibility of customizing it as per our requirements during the development cycle.This screen editor is called a display editor as it provides the feature that the text is visible to the user along with the changes simultaneously which the user does.
Emacs is also said to be a real-time editor because of its facility to provide the very fast visibility to the developer of every character wriiten on the screen.It also provides with the help feature and we can at any point of time take help of CTRL-h.
Emacs is also called to be an editor whoch can be customised and extended as per the developer's choice.
There are few terms related to Emacs which are listed and discussed below in the section.
1.Point
2.Echo Area
3.Mode Line
4.Menu Bar
Let's have a brief understanding of these terms:
1. Point
In Emacs like all other editors Point is the term which defines the position where the character will be placed when the developer types them from the keyboard. This point is also called as the cursor of the terminal which shows the location of the character to be placed while typing.
2. Echo Area
Echo Area is the segment on the extreme bottom of the editor screen. It shows some amount of text on the screen for various purposes.In Emacs the echoing is handled in a separate manner by the editor.
3. Mode Line
The last line on the screen of editor is called as mode line. The mode line starts and ends with the dashes on the screen.
4. Menu Bar
Similar to any other editor Emacs also have a menu bar on the top of the screen and we can select any option from that by clicking the mouse on that option.
2. VIM: The complete name for VIM is Vi Improved. It is also quite efficient to be loaded and implemented .Vim has strong feature of highlighting the syntax for the ruby files.It includes majorly all Unix commands.We can write all commands with the help of keyboard only.
This editor provides a very advanced built-in manual which the developer can have access to bt writing the help command when the editor is opened to be used.It can operate in two modes the command amode and insert mode but when the editor is started it always goes to the command mode first.
It is a text editor and not a word processor and thus its major focus is on getting the text entered and not the style, layout and formatting of the typed text.
3. TextPad: It is one of the quickest and simplest editors to be loaded. It also provides a very straightforward interface to its users and thus can be considered to be a good choice for Ruby programmers as we can add ruby support to it also.
It is developed by Helios Software Solutions. It is quite successful on most of the versions of Windows. It also has good features like syntax highlighting,strong search feature, spell check and macro recording which makes it acceptable by the developers over other editors.
This editor is developed with the aim of providing all the basic features which are required to make TextPad a good text editor. it fulfills all the text editing requirements.
4. ArachnoRuby:Ruby has one editor called as ArachnoRuby.This editor is feasible for Windows and Unix Platform.This editor was known to the developers as it was not that user freindly and thus didn't get teh right place of acceptance.It has the facitily of syntax highlighting, the automatic indentation and also the option of viewing the opened files in the several tabs.
| 
