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Text Editor Standards


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I really would like to teach users how to use the Ctrl+F, Ctrl+H functions, but the default Windows text editor often lacks any real formatting, and instead of using Ctrl+F for the Find function it uses Ctrl+T key instead. I honestly don't like Notepad++, seeing as I'm already using a different text editor which most people would most likely never use, but I'm not even sure, should I just write my instruction with the default Windows text editor in mind, or should I tell users to download a better editor? If yes which.

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Oh boy, bait for a text editor war. I'll recommend Sublime Text and Atom.

 

Sublime Text caveats:

  • Free, but will notify you with purchase reminders every couple hours (if you have it open)
  • Not open source

 

Atom caveats:

  •  It's an Electron app, meaning it's written in JavaScript, meaning it can be slow if you open too large of a file.

So those are my recommendations.

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There is no need to have each and every page explain how to use a text editor. Provide the actual changes needed and leave document navigation up to the reader.

 

Specific text editors should only be suggested for cases where the default editor actually breaks the file's formatting in a way that the game can't handle (I don't know of a specific example off-hand).

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There is no need to have each and every page explain how to use a text editor. Provide the actual changes needed and leave document navigation up to the reader.

 

Specific text editors should only be suggested for cases where the default editor actually breaks the file's formatting in a way that the game can't handle (I don't know of a specific example off-hand).

 

That's the reason as to why I made that thread, Notepad does that with a file users need to edit in order to fix a crash issue. I'll probably just create a new section called Text Editor\(editors?) in the Programming article I made, and provide more specific instructions on that page, as I always did anyway for other things, if someone wants to do this a bit more easily I want the information to be more easily accessible.

 

vLsLzcU.png

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*image*

That does happen really often with some games config files and is reason enough to suggest use of anything else than regular windows notepad, even if it does the job most of the time for regular user. 

 

But I mean really?? Is it really necessary to teach users how to use programs search function? Also problem with suggesting specific editors is that they are like browsers so everyone has their favorite, all will do the job, some are available only for specific OS and may have differences from approaching things and functionality. That's why "open X with preferred text editor." should be enough unless user is brain dead. Though I do not have objections linking the text editor part to another article containing stuff about text editors and choises of them. 

 

CTRL+F should be pretty universal hotkey for find feature, similar to CTRL+A/Z/X/C/V/etc so that's not exactly text editor specific thing. User are free to click the "edit" -> "search" and almost all people at my workplace do just that and they think me as super geek for doing such keyboard wizardry. 

Also on what system notepads search is CTRL+T? Mine is CTRL+F and has always been: 

QjbXSkR.png

 

Also Notepad_plusplus (IP.Board still not showing plus signs btw) has been really great on windows when I can compare files with it and use it as hex editor as well, but that program is windows only. 

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But I mean really?? Is it really necessary to teach users how to use programs search function? Also problem with suggesting specific editors is that they are like browsers so everyone has their favorite, all will do the job, some are available only for specific OS and may have differences from approaching things and functionality. That's why "open X with preferred text editor." should be enough unless user is brain dead. Though I do not have objections linking the text editor part to another article containing stuff about text editors and choises of them.

Yes, I want them to use the editor smartly, if I teach them how to use it properly more people can benefit from these fixes, and I want everything to be as easy as possible to setup, I also want this information to be easily available.

 

No one starts out with this knowledge, it took myself a while before I even used those functions, I never honestly had thought about using them, so I wasted my time looking up those lines manually, when I could've done this instead, and it would've taken me a minute instead of ten minutes.

 

This is an issue with the Italian language pack, for some reason they went with the letter T because of the word "Trova". If I could, I'd open a ticket somewhere and ask if this can be changed, although I doubt they'd bother with something like this.

XfDDQ0e.png

 

I honestly had forgotten about it until today.

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I am using Windows 10, I'm pretty sure the key is set to Ctrl+T because of the Italian language pack, because I once was able to use Ctrl+F and I had recently set Windows to English to do something, or maybe it's just some wierd bug, cba to test. Could just be some leftover.

 

Anyway, why you no Notepad plus plus ? stupid ipboard

 

Because I don't need it for quick edits, and I'm using something else for anything that takes longer.

 

Anyway just ignore the stuff I said above, none of that matters anyway, the formatting issue is something I'm more worried about. If nobody can come up with some standard then I'll have to build my edits around the Windows text editor. I'd rather not do that, but I don't have much choice, and I really want to keep things clear and easy, ideally I'd rather not have other users install extra software, otherwise I'll just get a bit more specific in my edits.

 

There was something else I wanted to add, but I can't really remember. Anyway ignore anything else, I'm worried about the formattation, I should've just said that initially.

 

I guess I'll just do the page thingy and make a list with a bunch of text editors. I mean I already wanted to do that, so I guess I'll just get started on it.

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Unfortunately the in-browser editor isn't that great because Wikimedia has to support older browsers. Even with modern browsers, getting text areas working in any particularly advanced way is incredibly difficult to do with JavaScript. Trust me, I've tried.

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Also Notepad_plusplus (IP.Board still not showing plus signs btw) has been really great on windows when I can compare files with it and use it as hex editor as well, but that program is windows only.

 

Sublime Text and Brackets are cross platformy but, idk I haven't seen any cross platform Hex Editors, or anything with text editing features and the hex stuff.

 

Unfortunately the in-browser editor isn't that great because Wikimedia has to support older browsers. Even with modern browsers, getting text areas working in any particularly advanced way is incredibly difficult to do with JavaScript. Trust me, I've tried.

I don't really understand, is that related to something I said? I'm really tired today and I've probably missed something, I don't understand why you brought that up.

 

Right now my posts are kinda half assed so I'm sorry if they are a bit incomplete.

 

If it wasn't clear this is what I'm mainly worried about. Brackets is displaying the file correctly while Notepad isn't.

vLsLzcU.png

 

Oh anyway I already added two editors to the list, they both run on Windows, OS X and Linux. I'll work more on this tomorrow.

http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Programming#Text_Editing

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