Where do your priorities lie?
Posted on 10.08.2009 02:27 am
I've been using NetBeans 6.5 for a while now and I must say that I do not like it.
For one simple reason. Autocomplete for PHP mixed with HTML is borderline unusable.
Lets do some examples. BTW this is very basic stuff.
1. Creating a comment at the bottom of a file will prevent you from creating a new line below it.
/**
* This is a comment at the bottom of a file
*/
Now when you write this comment and go to the last line (the one with */ ) and press enter. You would hope for a new line to play around with. Well all hope is lost, since when you hit enter, you get this.
/**
* This is a comment at the bottom of a file
*
*/
So there is no way to get a comment less line if you wrote a comment at the bottom of a file.
This infuriated me when I saw this first. I had cartoon like smoke coming from my ears. Since I like to be pragmatic and start off with a comment to describe to myself what on earth I am trying to achieve.
2. Auto complete will prevent you from writing quotes in some cases.
Yes I am not making this up. I can reproduce this very simply but I know it applies to more cases.
This one is simple to reproduce and is something I tried to write straight after the anger filled session of the bug above.
<?php
echo
And then I wanted to type in a double quote. You know this " thing needed around a string. But when I hit the key combination, nothing happened. Same for a single quote.
Why on earth would the autocomplete mechanism stop this? Autocomplete should never correct your mistake. It should only finish what you have started.
Why am I blaming autocomplete on this? Because if I turn it off (Tools -> Options -> Insert closing ...). Then I can write to my hearts content.
3. HTML Automatic tag closing places the cursor in strange places
This must be done to be experienced. But I'll try to show this. The | character will represent the cursor.
I'm going to write a table.
<table>|
Now NetBeans want's to be the helpful paperclip it is and when I hit enter it will fill in the closing table.
<table>|</table>
Awesome. Ok since I am not insane, I want the closing table in the next line. So I hit enter again.
<tabl|e>
</table>
Do you see where the cursor is? This is not only with the table element. But with every damn html element. If I hit enter I get this.
<ta|bl
e>
</table>
GAH. Now I have to cross Geany and NetBeans of my list.
I went through the buglist for NetBeans and found unresolved items related to things like this going back to 2005. Does not inspire confidence.
Why Geany also? It doesn't close parenthesis correctly. I filed a bug report for it 3 weeks ago. And nothing. To be nice to Geany though, it's still at version 0.17
0 3 Like it or hate it? - Comment (1)
Darrell
0 0 / Posted on 02.02.2010 11:12 pm
Nice post. Couldn't agree more.I can't think of an open source IDE I haven't tried (for Linux, anyway), and I always come back to Kate.
I guess my next favourite would be Komodo Edit, although for some reason it won't wrap long lines, which makes me nuts.
Process time: 0.010159 seconds
