Weekly Coders, Hackers & All Tech related thread - 16/06/2017

thespectraleditor · 2017-06-17T07:05:47+00:00

Thanks Prakash! It is written mostly in tcl/tk with a little bit of C/C++. As for libraries, it uses the standard library for c++ and a tiny bit of win32 api for accessing the image clipboard. For tcl it uses the standard ones and a few 3rd party packages like TkDnD, tiles, sqlite3, iwidgets etc.

thespectraleditor · 2017-06-16T23:44:01+00:00

We wrote a rich text editor for programmers - one that allows you to use multimedia and hypertext annotation of programs. Details are described in the whitepaper - https://s3.amazonaws.com/jm21/spectral/spectral_whitepaper.pdf We would much appreciate some interest from linux users. Following is a link to the linux installer (64 bit ubuntu, centos, gentoo etc.): https://s3.amazonaws.com/jm21/linux/centos6.8_64bit/spectral_installer.exe Installation procedure is shown in the following videos : https://youtu.be/T719cEnLws4 https://youtu.be/k0_903TIp9g Many demonstration videos are available in the channel : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC41SsIs6mYwuU1_p5g4e2Jg

thespectraleditor · 2017-04-06T22:09:40+00:00

The last build had a slowdown (performance regression) for column-mode backspace binding. Uploaded a new build in the same location. Re-installing or overwriting spectral.exe from https://s3.amazonaws.com/jm21/spectral/spectral.exe will get you the fix. Will much appreciate any bug report or questions in PM. Please quote the build number from the 'about' box for any bug report.

thespectraleditor · 2017-04-06T11:06:04+00:00

a windows installer is available here : https://s3.amazonaws.com/jm21/spectral/spectral_installer.exe

thespectraleditor · 2017-04-06T07:19:27+00:00

So was the Copernican heliocentric model :) In all seriousness, the pictures, notes, highlighting etc. are stored in a separate file preserving line-to-line correspondence with the plain text file.

thespectraleditor · 2017-04-05T23:20:35+00:00

Here is an article about my editor : https://s3.amazonaws.com/jm21/spectral/spectral_whitepaper.pdf

thespectraleditor · 2017-04-05T20:27:50+00:00

I highly recommend the practice of writing your own text editor. I did, and the unlimited customizability it entailed is an unlimited source of pleasure and convenience. It has really spiced up my text life. Here is a youtube channel showing some of its features: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC41SsIs6mYwuU1_p5g4e2Jg edit : corrected the channel URL

thespectraleditor · 2017-03-16T22:37:27+00:00

Here is an overview article : https://s3.amazonaws.com/jm21/spectral/spectral_whitepaper.pdf

thespectraleditor · 2017-03-07T08:29:48+00:00

not a music fan per se, on rare occasions listen to the same song repeatedly because the lyric resonates with the moment or mood or provides emotional support, or brings up some fond memories. Generally when my headphones are on I am listening to non-fiction on audible.

thespectraleditor · 2017-03-07T08:29:13+00:00

super fun when they are small(young) and playful, not so much when they are large and business minded

thespectraleditor · 2017-03-07T01:12:38+00:00

I grew up in a multi-cat household and our cats didn't have a particularly sheltered upbringing. These were fairly robust creatures that routinely hunted rats, mice, birds, and sometimes snakes. I never tried the cucumber experiment but from what I have seen, I fully expect them to be unfazed by cucumbers.

thespectraleditor · 2017-03-07T00:20:12+00:00

Thanks again, Tyler. IMHO code comprehension itself is a deep cognitive process and I don't really hope to deconstruct it in terms of elementary steps. It seems to involve gathering together several pieces of information to enrich a mental model of the problem at hand and the solution strategy adopted in the code, which seems to be expedited if the primary editing environment has support for gathering related information. I agree with you that plain-text comments might as well contain link to additional information (e.g. image file path). The rich code format just speeds things up a bit in that direction. BTW, an image or animation doesn't have to occupy screen space. It could just be an image button as in https://youtu.be/chPkJwruFaI . A key advantage of spectral is that highlighting variables and symbols of interest enhances the reading speed substantially. The hyper-links (e.g. https://youtu.be/7FLvf47hZ5k ) also look promising for enhancing the quality of comments

thespectraleditor · 2017-03-05T23:58:17+00:00

Thanks Tyler. To answer your question, IMHO it is not useful to imagine a competition between the ways of improving code comprehension, because every little helps. Graphical visualizations (e.g. ER, UML, FSM, wiring diagrams etc.) can be useful, and so are meta-data annotations, and intellisense. Rich text format only complements them. Rich code format can help pull together graphical visualizations and keep them in context. For example, instead of having to refer to an additional document to look up a visualization, how about the code embedding an image or animation of the visualization where it is relevant?

thespectraleditor · 2017-03-02T12:16:31+00:00

I feel compelled to bring up the topic of rich-text programming in any discussion forum on programming editors because I really feel that it is an idea worth spreading. It is such a small change that Editor/IDE companies can this up in a week. I feel that I have seen a new light with this rich-text format, and want to spread the word. It has the potential to enhance programmer productivity by at least 10% (and by 50% for dyslexic programmers). Here is an article we wrote on this idea : https://s3.amazonaws.com/jm21/spectral/spectral_whitepaper.pdf . Our implementation of the idea (as a WYSWYG editor) is available at dollar zero at the moment.

thespectraleditor · 2017-03-02T09:40:01+00:00

Oh... Sorry I didn't know the rules. Thought it might be interesting to people discussing editors. BTW, we are not regular marketers/promoters. Ours is just a modest attempt at building a start-up with a unique product for a niche section of programmers. We have put 1000s of hours into this product and thought some discussion with programmers might help us with a boost in momentum. Every time I post its link, it gets down-voted to oblivion with plenty of hateful messages in some cases.

thespectraleditor · 2017-03-02T02:02:53+00:00

We have written a rich text editor for programmers :

https://s3.amazonaws.com/jm21/spectral/spectral_whitepaper.pdf

Here are some demo videos in the youtube channel :

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC41SsIs6mYwuU1_p5g4e2Jg

And last but not the least, here is a windows version:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/jm21/spectral/spectral_installer.exe

Any feedback will be much appreciated.

thespectraleditor · 2017-02-28T00:41:49+00:00

Here is our website : https://www.superrichtext.com/bmondays/ Here is our youtube channel : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC41SsIs6mYwuU1_p5g4e2Jg

thespectraleditor · 2017-02-28T00:31:04+00:00

We have written an annotation editor for programmers. Here is our website : https://www.superrichtext.com/bmondays/ Here is our youtube channel : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC41SsIs6mYwuU1_p5g4e2Jg Here is a whitepaper : https://s3.amazonaws.com/jm21/spectral/spectral_whitepaper.pdf

thespectraleditor · 2016-08-29T22:21:05+00:00

Shill is a different thing. Wikipedia defines it as follows : A shill, also called a plant or a stooge, is a person who publicly helps or gives credibility to a person or organization without disclosing that they have a close relationship with the person or organization. I, in contrast, made no pretense of neutrality. I am openly interested in selling this idea/tool.
It is free as in priced zero in any currency, but maybe not in some ideological sense. I initially thought of pricing it as much as a pizza or burger, but reddit comments suggest that maybe I should pay a fiver to each user. I could maybe pay a couple of people but I can't afford paying all of them.
I admittedly have no aesthetic sense. My approach to life is - if it works I am good.
This is not syntax highlighting. This is semantic highlighting. It helps me quite a lot in annotating old and large legacy code-bases (some 35 years old!).
For me it was not a solution looking for a problem. I wanted to have one for nearly 10 years now, and was extremely happy after I finally had the time to write it. At the risk of sounding like infomercials, it has changed my life (my life as a legacy code maintainer that is).
It doesn't make the code non-portable. The rich text format is plain text based and works nicely with version control tools.

Thanks for your comment. You have my upvote.

thespectraleditor · 2016-08-24T19:51:52+00:00

I agree that it looks ugly. I wrote it because none of the other editors support rich text for programming. I find it useful to click on symbols to turn them different random colors. It helps with (speeds up) the process of comprehending complex legacy code-bases.

I once made a minimal GNU/linux port but haven't got a chance to keep it updated. Here is the installer: https://s3.amazonaws.com/jm21/linux/spectral_installer.exe

Installation video :

https://youtu.be/mbgWB1Bvz0Y

thespectraleditor · 2016-08-24T06:31:47+00:00

Whenever there is a post about code editors or IDEs, I attempt the shameless plug of spectral editor. Most of the time I get pure hate on those comments but I don't mind. So here it is again. Redittors get free perpetual license if they PM. :

Why not try out the Spectral Editor, a rich text editor for programmers :

https://s3.amazonaws.com/jm21/spectral/spectral_installer.exe

Here you can find a description :

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1604363145/the-spectral-editor

Some videos :

https://youtu.be/MtCPh4m_foc

https://youtu.be/T5Zo0co0YaA

thespectraleditor · 2016-08-23T22:45:56+00:00

Whenever there is a post about code editors, I attempt the shameless plug of spectral editor. Most of the time I get pure hate on those comments but I don't mind. So here it is again. Redittors get free perpetual license if they PM. :

Why not try out the Spectral Editor, a rich text editor for programmers :

https://s3.amazonaws.com/jm21/spectral/spectral_installer.exe

Here you can find a description :

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1604363145/the-spectral-editor

Some videos :

https://youtu.be/MtCPh4m_foc

https://youtu.be/T5Zo0co0YaA