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Posted by: Stuart

I enjoy working with HTML, XHTML, CSS and designers as a web developer. At home I enjoy listening to music, playing music, reading and food.

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Posted on: 22 April 2005

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Comments: 9

ConTEXT

Sometimes you come across something you just have to share. In the interest of customer satisfaction I’ve been trying ConTEXT for a good 3 months or so now and I feel that it is good enough to add to my software recommendation pages. What is it? It’s a text editor with syntax highlighting for a number of different coding languages.

  • C/C++
  • Delphi/Pascal
  • Java
  • Java Script
  • Visual Basic
  • Perl/CGI
  • HTML
  • SQL
  • FoxPro
  • 80×86 assembler
  • Python
  • PHP
  • Tcl/Tk

These are just the ones included with the download package. There are 193 supported coding languages all told and the software has been translated into 22 languages for world-wide distribution. Can’t be bad eh? The link above will take you straight to the features page. Go check them all out. My only reservation is that it seems to be Win-only at the moment. If that changes I’ll let you know.

Now I have a preferred code editor (HTMLPad) so why do I want this one? Well here’s the clincher for me. During installation you can have ConTEXT replace notepad in your shell extensions. Oh lawdy! No more notepad for me! I hate the way that frigging piece of useless crap keeps mangling my code, especially my htaccess file. I can’t remember how many times my site has disappeared into the ether after I’ve edited my htaccess. Well, no more you crap Microsoft reject.

Try ConTEXT even if it’s just to replace notepad. You won’t regret it.

Comments ( 9 )

Podz
Did you try Notepad++ ?
I hunted around for a while and used this because it is very very light on resources, has loads of syntax highlighting, character encoding and other bits and bobs.
It’s a while since I looked CONtext – I got that as it’s rec’d over at nonags – but maybe I should take another look ?
22 April 2005, 21:03
Stuart
Yes I tried that and another called “np” or “pn” but I felt ConTEXT integrated into the shell better. Of course most of these things are a matter of taste. I think I just preferred ConTEXT at the end of the day so I still have it and it gets used quite often in it’s notepad replacement form. With all my stuff being in the database a full-blown text editor is a bit of a luxury really. I like it though.
23 April 2005, 02:19
Luigi
Yet I think that “our” “old” emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs.html) is the best choice. No time for me now to elaborate, but believe me, it is very good at its job.

By the way, are you sure that your narrow column is always the best choice? See what happens here, as I post a long link: the text doesn’t adjust nicely.
26 April 2005, 08:33
Stuart
Hi Luigi. I’ll go look at the “old emacs” thing though, as you know, I couldn’t use it at the moment. As for my narrow columns, they aren’t the cause of the spaced-out text. It’s my preference for text-justification that causes that effect and I shall not be changing it any time soon.
26 April 2005, 09:23
Luigi
I couldn’t use it at the moment.

It runs on M$oft as well, if this is what you mean.
26 April 2005, 09:46
Stuart
I’ll find that out when I get a chance to go and have a look.
26 April 2005, 11:16
Lily
i like emacs

i love emacs

i love textedit

hmmm
8 May 2005, 03:21
Stuart
Hi Lily. Enjoying your new powerbook? I now have emacs installed for those who know what I’m talking about. Haven’t had a good try-out yet though.
8 May 2005, 10:02
Lily
yes actually i am enjoying it :-)

hey, is vi hard to learn? i’ve never figured out what was going on when some application launched it and then i freeze and go crazy
9 May 2005, 02:30

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