Up to now I’ve been using JEdit as my editor when programming RoR apps. Nice, but not quite there. Also, would be nice to have an IDE, me thinks. So I finally gave RadRails a spin. This is on a windows box, so no TextMate… I’ll switch to a Mac when Vista forces me to upgrade one way or the other. Tangent. Back to what I found out after two days of trying RadRails.
The first thing that drove me nuts is that RadRails doesn’t support drag&drop cut&paste of text. I’m so used to selecting text and then dragging the
selection in order to move the text that I just can’t do without. I can’t believe that it’s not supported, it just can’t be true, yet I haven’t
found a way to “enable” such a feature. Please let me know if there is a solution!
Then I found out that I don’t seem to be able to split
the editor window, e.g. to see two files at the same time. It’s easy to
switch between the most recent few files using the tabs at the top, but
I often really want to see two or three files tiled vertically on top
of one another. Ouch!
I love being able to stop & restart the webbrick server at the bottom, and the tailing of the log file is also often handy. But I don’t see any instructions on how to set things up so I can run rails in the debugger and set breakpoints. Maybe that’s not possible, dunno. So I haven’t seen any way to turn all these nifty debugging buttons from being teasers to becoming actually useful.
I’m coming to the conclusion that at this point RadRails is a no-go and
am switching back to JEdit. Maybe in a few months RadRails will have
improved sufficiently to give it another spin…
RadRails no-go
To see two files at a time, you can drag the file name bar downwards to the bottom of the editor window and a faint outline of a new panel should appear. Similarly drag it to the right and you’ll get vertical windows next to each other. I’m not sure if you can go beyond two horizontal or vertical editors at a time.
Not sure about the D+D for code selections. Email the RadRails guys – perhaps its a feature that can be easily added.
Mikepence: I tried VIM and despite being a frequent vi user, I just can’t get used to the combination of mouse and modal editing. I always end up mixed-up between the modes and drag&drop selection with the mouse. Maybe I should try for longer.
DrNic: thanks for the tip about dragging the file tabs, that indeed works just like charm. But what a well-hidden feature! I’ve actually been using RadRails lately. Not falling in love, but it works. The search is nice and fast (I have edge rails in my vendor dir, so it’s really handy for finding the Rails source for something). One other feature I don’t like in RadRails is that you can’t drag’n’drop a random file into the window to open it. I’m often hunting around for something in the gem installation directories and would then love to drag a file onto RadRails to open it. Instead, I either have to navigate through the “open file” dialog, or I use the “open with vim…” context menu on the file. Ahh, someday it’ll all come together!
I have gone a similar route, but recently went from JEdit, which I have used for years, to VIM. No turning back. Get a real editor. ;)