[Chicken-users] Re: SciTE

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> It just flunked out-of-the-box ease-of-use.  In C/C++ mode the default 
> 'indent' command tries to invoke a program called 'astyle', and since 
> it isn't installed, nothing happens.  So, I read the docs and learned 
> that 'astyle' is an external code formatter.  I downloaded and 
> installed it.  Now when I type 'indent', the file is changed 
> externally, and is not reflected in my actual editing window.  I find 
> this lame.  I'm now reading mailing list entries about whether the 
> behavior I want is possible - that is, just indent when I tell it to, 
> and show the results immediately.  But IMNSO an editor should already 
> do this out-of-the-box with no special futzing.  Broken indenting is 
> the reason I ditched XEmacs in the first place!
>
> SciTE is still simpler than XEmacs, both in terms of documentation and 
> code size, so I'm not giving up yet.

It took about 15 minutes of Googling to discover I need a magic 
statement "load.on.activate=1" in my SCITEUser.property file.  After 
doing that, indenting does update in my buffer.  Mercifully I didn't 
have to look very hard to find SCITEUser.property, as there was a 
built-in menu option for modifying it.  So, there's some esoterica, but 
so far not as bad as XEmacs.

Integration of the "Artistic Style" tool does have advantages when 
bringing in code from other editors.  It is intended to address the "I 
don't indent like you do" problem.  http://astyle.sourceforge.net/


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every