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Script Editor - Cross platform or not?

by Bil Simser · in Torque Game Engine · 07/13/2004 (5:08 am) · 9 replies

Just looking for opinions here. Is it important that an external script editor be cross platform (i.e. Linux, Mac, and Win32) or not? Some people feel that having a good script editor on say the Windows platform is good enough as they won't be developing on the other ones. Others might use Linux or Mac as their primary platform so excluding them from having a native tool might be presumptuous. So what's everyone's thoughts here?
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Torque 3D Owner Tom Bampton
#1
07/13/2004 (5:38 am)
I'm of the opinion that it is so easy these days to make things cross platform that there is really no excuse to restrict things to one platform, especially when you are starting a new project.

So, should be cross platform? Hell, yes ;-)

Have a look at wxWidgets, that should get you everything you need to do an xplat editor.

T.

Associate Stefan Beffy Moises
#2
07/13/2004 (6:49 am)
Yes :)
But I use JEdit on Linux and Win anyways...
just curious: you wanna write another script editor?

Torque Owner Bil Simser
#3
07/13/2004 (7:09 am)
@Beffy: Just fishing for opinions right now.

Torque 3D Owner Tom Bampton
#4
07/13/2004 (12:38 pm)
Bil,

I was just googling for a Lua debugger and came across this ... www.scintilla.org/ ... seems like it would cut out a lot of work for you should you decide to go ahead with making an editor.

Tom.

Torque Owner Prairie Games
Prairie Games, Inc.
#5
07/13/2004 (12:41 pm)
I use wxWidgets via wxPython... and Scintilla via SPE (Stani's Python Editor, which totally, totally, totally rocks). Scintilla already has a Lua edit mode, I am sure it would trivially to make a nice TorqueScript one...

JEdit is also nice...

-Josh Ritter
Prairie Games

Torque Owner Bil Simser
#6
07/13/2004 (12:43 pm)
Actually I did look at Scintilla and did a test run. wxWindows (now wxWidgets) has a nice Scintella wrapper (wxSCT) so with minimal effort you can get a .cs editor up and running.

JEdit is interesting, but I despise running Java apps and they're horribly slow and generally ugly.

Torque Owner Prairie Games
Prairie Games, Inc.
#7
07/13/2004 (12:50 pm)
Great.. and crossplatform.. if you scripted the editor yourself (which is how I am generating our IDE), you can save yet more time... and headaches...

-J

Torque 3D Owner Tom Bampton
#8
07/14/2004 (2:57 am)
I had a brief look at Scintilla's source last night. Looks like it would be really quick and easy to add a lexer for TorqueScript. Theres also quite a lot of existing and free to use code based around Scintilla that could be used either to test things or as a base for a decent .cs editor.

It would be nice to have a small xplat IDE based around wxWidgets and Scintilla that could be adapted to individual projects needs. I do a lot of TGE and non-TGE stuff, my non-TGE stuff uses Lua. Would be really nice to be able to use the same IDE for both. At the moment I just use TextPad which rocks, but its not really an IDE, and it's not xplat :)

T.

Torque Owner Bil Simser
#9
07/14/2004 (10:42 am)
@Tom: I spent about 3 hours this morning building a wxWindows prototype using wxSCT and the sample program. 2.9 hours were spent just figuring out wxSCT and Scintilla. The other .1 hour was spent creating the profile for Torque which amounted to adding entries for the built-in functions, the keywords and some other sundry things. It's workable right now but the real challenge will be to build the Intellisense piece to expose the functions in a dropdown and some other IDE like things. It was a simple technology spike project I did. Not sure where it will go but the gist of this thread was to ask the question of cross-platform or not. Thanks.