#atomeditor

Even though we don't build many desktop applications like we used to anymore, a hybrid desktop application is a good solution for some use cases (if customer needs access to intranet/local machine resources). But desktop ui development is a whole different game ( not glamorous ). If its windows only, a donNet solution would be alright (using WPF?). If you need cross platform, you need something like Java (Java FX) or QT. There are python UI kits available (but fiddly business).

A new option (a very good option if major player adoption is any indication) is node based applications that uses the chrome browser shell.

Github pioneered this by creating the Atom Editor.The Atom Editor shell called Electron is a quick start to create cross platform desktop apps using web tech (JS/Coffeescrip/CSS/Less) and Node.

Some popular cross apps built using the shell are;

Mapbox Studio

Microsoft Visual Studio Code (Cross platform VS IDE)

Slack Desktop A good list of Electron based apps are listed here.

Electron based applications;

Can be compiled as executables for distribution

Free for commercial use (MIT license)

Has an auto update process

"Hot" Editor

I'm always on the look out for a good text editor, especially one that makes it easy to create and publish content for the web. Recently I learned about the Atom editor from a random guy at Target. We were talking about ladders and somehow we figured out we were both nerds and started talking about Emacs versus Vim. I was on the Vim side and he was on the Emacs side, and then he said "But now I mainly use Atom, which is the hot editor these days." I asked him if it was open source,1 cross-platform,2 and had some of the other features that I look for in an app. It sounded interesting, especially when he said I could set it up to use Vim commands. So I looked at the Atom.io site, read some of the discussion group messages, searched the web for Atom.io and Atom editor to get a sense of what other people think about it, and decided to try it. My verdict: I like it!

Install and Customize

I installed it on my Windows and OS X devices, along with these packages:

Vim Mode

Web View

Date

I made these customizations:

Disabled the Metrics package so Google Analytics won't know about my Atom use

Set the Vim Mode package to "Start in Insert Mode"

Fiddled with the Bracket Matcher package's Settings

I'll probably install these packages at some point:

HTML Preview

One of the five SFTP packages

Atom is highly customizable and there are many more customizations that I'm thinking about making.

Wish List

I'm using Atom right now to write and preview this Tumblr post. At the moment, the main thing I'm wishing is that the Markdown Preview package, which is bundled with Atom, supported previewing Markdown footnotes and abbreviations, both of which I'm using in this post.

So my first wish is that:

Markdown Preview supported a flavor of Markdown, such as Markdown Extra or kramdown, that supports footnotes and abbreviations. Markdown Preview currently supports GitHub Flavored Markdown, which is a superset of CommonMark.

I also wish it were easy to do the following within Atom:

Turn off auto updating.

Open recent files or folders. This could be done with a Recent... submenu on the File menu.

Write and preview mathematical equations. This could be implemented with LaTeX, MathML, or another equation markup language, and MathJax.

Insert Unicode characters in the Windows version of Atom. The Mac OS X version supports this through the Edit > Special Characters menu item.

Encrypt and decrypt a file using Blowfish. I like to use Blowfish because Vim 7.3+ can encrypt and decrypt Blowfish-encrypted files.

Email a file or part of a file

Tweet

Post to Tumblr

My last three wishes make me think of Zawinski's Law3:

Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

It's been about 20 years since JWZ stated his software law and I think it's time to update it to:

Every app4 attempts to expand until it can connect to social networking systems. Those apps which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

I hope Atom expands to satisfy my wishes and that a lot of talented open-source software developers use and contribute to its expansion. I'm dreaming of an editor I won't need to replace for a long time so I can focus on writing rather than searching for the perfect editor.

Thanks

Thank you random guy at Target for telling me about Atom! Thank you GitHub for creating this great IDE and making it free (in both senses of the word5).

Resources

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(text_editor)

twitter.com/AtomEditor

discuss.atom.io

stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/atom-editor

By: NM Last Updated: 2014-10-28 URL: nancym.tumblr.com/post/100938088785/atom-editor    

Footnotes

Atom is MIT licensed and is FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software). ↩︎

Atom is cross-platform and pre-built versions are available for Debian Linux (Ubuntu), OS X 10.8+, and Windows 7+. ↩︎

For more about JWZ and his law, see jwzhacks and Wikipedia: Jamie Zawinski. ↩︎

I use the word "app" in my revision of Zawinski's Law because the words "program" and "software" seem to have been replaced by the words "app" and "application" in 2014. ↩︎

So, this happened:

When you use @atomeditor, sometimes your editor instance is null: https://t.co/udsgDBOeJU #wat

— Shawna Scott (@shawnacscott) October 10, 2014

And Rob Story, with the winning response:

@shawnacscott Write a text editor in JavaScript, they said. What could possibly go wrong, they said.