Terminal and Text Editor recommendations

Dr Small · 2008-05-06 01:54:56

Apart from my sudo problems, I need a new terminal (preferably something I can customize) and a good GUI editor. I have a throbbing headache from trying to read the small fonts in xterm from 2 feet away.

I know of mousepad and xfce-term, but I wanted to know if I had any other choices before I go installing a bunch of xfce dependencies. I really want to stay away from Gnome, so that excludes gnome-terminal and gedit (which I have been accustomed to).

Dr Small

jbromley · 2008-05-06 02:10:59

Well, for terminals you've got the following options:
* rxvt - lighter than xterm
* aterm - rxvt derivative with transparency and other eye-candy features if you're into that
* rxvt-unicode (urxvt) - aterm plus unicode
* mrxvt - tabbed aterm, not sure if it does unicode or not, nice and very programmable
* sakura - tabbed term for GTK, I've only seen this one

Of course, if the only problem you have with xterm is that the font is too small, you can use X resources to choose a larger font.

For editors, the big two are of course vim (gvim is a "GUI" version) and emacs/xemacs. I never used anything other than those two.

Regards,
j

thayer · 2008-05-06 03:47:42

urxvt is my personal choice of terminal, but FYI there are existing threads on this forum that ask the exact same question and dozens of answers await you already.

skymt · 2008-05-06 06:30:28

Urxvt is probably the best-of-breed terminal emulator at the moment.

Since you asked for a GUI text editor, I'll assume you don't want the learning curve of Vim or Emacs. Geany is a decent editor/IDE without too many dependencies, and it mostly follows normal GUI conventions so learning it will be simple.

danielsoft · 2008-05-06 08:11:21

For terminal I use roxterm. Small, no big dependencies, with tab support, URL launching...

finferflu · 2008-05-06 08:33:37

I use gnome-terminal as my default terminal on any WM, so here I can't suggest you anything
As for a text editor, I really encourage you to learn Vim (as suggested, Gvim is the GUI version on Vim). It really is a powerful text editor, I use it for everything, from editing config files to writing essays. There are plenty of good tutorials on the web, and there is a special "tips" section on the official Vim website, which is very handy when you are looking for specific information.

synthead · 2008-05-06 08:33:51

I really like mrxvt. You can make it very pretty and it really is highly configurable. Setting up font sizes is not a problem whatsoever.

I've never tried urxvt, perhaps I should?

torin_dan · 2008-05-06 11:12:26

urxvt & scite

Dr Small · 2008-05-06 12:52:39

Thanks for the suggestions, guys.
I am a Vim user, I just haven't got around to installing Vim (currently using Vi). But the reasoning behind a GUI editor, was so I could read the fonts. Everything in xterm is so small. Maybe if I could just get the font size bigger in it, that would really help.

Dr Small

dolby · 2008-05-06 13:13:38

evilvte is a nice little terminal

thayer · 2008-05-06 15:54:02

Dr Small wrote:

Thanks for the suggestions, guys.
I am a Vim user, I just haven't got around to installing Vim (currently using Vi). But the reasoning behind a GUI editor, was so I could read the fonts. Everything in xterm is so small. Maybe if I could just get the font size bigger in it, that would really help.
Dr Small

Sounds like you just need to add an ~/.Xdefaults text file and you'll be fine. You can specify your font and font sizes like so:

urxvt*font: xft:Monospace:pixelsize=14
urxvt*boldFont: xft:Monospace:pixelsize=14

Granted, that's for the urxvt terminal, but if you change it to xterm, or remove urxvt* entirely you should be fine. A quick search on the forums will provide plenty of examples.

peets · 2008-05-06 17:24:20

Yeah, what Thayer says.

To change font size on the fly, I use what's mentioned there: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=44121. It might work with terminals other than urxvt (don't they all emulate some VT####-or-rather terminal?)

MONODA · 2008-05-06 17:29:55

i use sakura and leafpad but you may want geany as a text editor since it is more powerful.

thayer · 2008-05-06 17:38:39

peets wrote:

Yeah, what Thayer says.
To change font size on the fly, I use what's mentioned there: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=44121. It might work with terminals other than urxvt (don't they all emulate some VT####-or-rather terminal?)

That's awesome, peets I had never seen that printf urxvt tip before. Thanks!

Zepp · 2008-05-06 18:31:53

urxvt and vim

dunc · 2008-05-06 18:37:08

danielsoft wrote:

For terminal I use roxterm. Small, no big dependencies, with tab support, URL launching...

Very similar to Xfce-Terminal, too.

As is Sakura, which I just installed yesterday. The only thing I miss from ROXTerm is drag-and-drop from the desktop.

synthead · 2008-05-06 19:23:12

A really teeny tiny text editor I used to use before mousepad (switched to XFCE) was Beaver. I love the simplicity of it, and it's really powerful. AFAIK, it's not being developed any longer though.

http://www.nongnu.org/beaver/

http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=10914

ToastedToad · 2008-05-06 20:48:40

Another vote for urxvt, and medit for editing confs.

scrawler · 2008-05-06 23:19:41

editors:
emacs, geany, scite bluefish and medit.

Terminal:
mrxvt, terminal (xfce4), xterm. On this new box mrxvt is flaky (garbage characters everywhere). I just got roxterm, and I like it. I also just got sakura, but don't see the point. I'm willing to believe urxvt is the greatest, but first I have to know what's so great about it.

sujoy · 2008-05-09 11:59:09

urxvt and vim, a great combo!
actually i never used an editor other than vi/vim

Procyon · 2008-05-09 12:25:32

I use urxvt because I need unicode. Before I used aterm and I'm a bit sad that urxvt is quite a bit slower with displaying a lot of text.
My favorite GUI editor is leafpad. My favorite console editor is ed.

fuscia · 2008-05-09 21:28:55

if you like mousepad, but don't want the xfce baggage, try leafpad. mousepad was modelled after leafpad. for terminals, urxvt is pretty darn good (and i even like xterm, a lot).

Husio · 2008-05-10 04:59:48

vim + best terminal for it - xterm.

xelados · 2008-05-10 06:37:16

Like the others, I recommend urxvt if you want a dependency-free terminal. Unfortunately, I can't think of any GUI text editors that aren't tied to their respective desktop environment. I'd go with vim (gvim if you prefer a GTK+ interface) or emacs.

fuscia · 2008-05-10 13:18:46

xelados wrote:

Like the others, I recommend urxvt if you want a dependency-free terminal. Unfortunately, I can't think of any GUI text editors that aren't tied to their respective desktop environment. I'd go with vim (gvim if you prefer a GTK+ interface) or emacs.

leafpad only depends of gtk2, so if you're already using stuff that depends on gtk2, that would be the choice.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-05-06 01:54:56

Terminal and Text Editor recommendations

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Re: Terminal and Text Editor recommendations

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