So much for cheating on Emacs
Tried Eclipse PDT, Komodo Edit and NetBeans.
- Eclipse wouldn't build properly on my Arch install; the build recipe's broken.
- Komodo Edit lacks debugging support, which, for me, leaves nothing but a sluggish, bloated editor (remember, this is coming from an Emacs user).
- And NetBeans... Well, I didn't even get around to trying it out, since the ugly, ugly, ugly fonts scared me away.
Seriously, what the hell's the matter with Java's Swing?
I checked out workarounds to get Swing to acknowledge that my setup, in fact, was capable of displaying non-ugly fonts. While the splash screen readily agreed, the rest of the platform was... er, rather in denial.
I figured, "Well, maybe it's my JRE," since I using the one that came with the free (as in freedom) OpenJDK, instead of Sun's official JRE. So I tried switching.
Lo. Java apps refused to even acknowledge that my setup can even display anything aside from a blank frame!
I know, I know (I just plain forgot), it's a bug in Sun's Java environment, which, if I remember correctly, is triggered when you're using a non-reparenting window manager.
But I'll be damned if I'm going to change my perfectly great X11 setup (see screenshot) just to kowtow to a damned IDE.
(I have a dual-screen setup, with xrandr displaying the laptop's screen "below" that of my LCD (damned Intel bugs...); on the laptop, I have Vinagre connected to my mom's laptop, on which I'm trying (and failing) to get GyachI working.)
So. I ripped out Sun's JRE and put OpenJDK back in again.
Anyway. Komodo Edit. Laudable effort, especially building on XUL. I like that. A lot, actually.
Except it really doesn't work for me.
Maybe their full-blown IDE works better (or at all). But it's $295 per license. And it's not entirely free (only the parts it has in common with Komodo Edit are).
By not working, I don't mean that it doesn't run (it does). I mean, it doesn't cut it for me. As I said earlier, without the debugging feature, all I'm left with is a bloated editor. And I don't mean the startup time, since I always keep my editor running and, usually, the only time I ever start an editor up is after I've logged in.
Komodo Edit is bloated because everything I try to do with it involves some kind of lag. Scrolling (either with the scroll button on my trackball or through the scrollbar) takes a while before responding. Switching tabs entails a similar lag. Worse yet, typing in a whole bash of characters (I usually hit about 85-90 WPMs after the coffee kicks in) produces an impossible-to-miss one or two second delay before the first input reflects on the screen.
As for Eclipse, well... As I mentioned in my previous post, I've had more than a couple of people insist that I try it for the past few years.
I suppose we're just not meant to be together.
Although... Well, I've found pre-built Arch packages for PHPEclipse (which is supposedly a whole 'nother beast that the Eclipse PDT I tried out before).
So maybe I will have something to play with tomorrow.
We'll see.
UPDATE: I tried playing with PHPEclipse tonight (past midnight, so I guess that qualifies as "tomorrow"). It couldn't handle one source file that had a mix of PHP, HTML and JavaScript. Emacs, by default, can't do this either. But with nXhtml, Emacs just takes it in stride.