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[–] 15 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The only thing a GUI text editor can be better at than a terminal editor is making it easier to use the mouse.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    That really is one hell of a hot take 😀

    I for one really love the zoomed out preview on the right that has become popular in recent years.

    https://jason-williams.co.uk/assets/img/2020/debugging_screenshot.png

    Really hard to do in a terminal. If you have errors you can see very fast where they are located/clustered in the file and can already tell just by the shape of the program where it is.

    Another example: GUI color picker directly in my editor as a tooltip above color values in css/html templates.

    Another example: inline preview of latex or Template fragments.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    That really is one hell of a hot take

    Yea well most of the comments in here are lukewarm takes so... there you go.

    I for one really love the zoomed out preview on the right that has become popular in recent years.

    I almost never navigate code based on its order or "shape" in the file. LSP-based symbol tagging or searching is way faster than scrolling. I guess you can click the spot on the preview that you need, but I refuse to reach for my mouse while editing text.

    Really hard to do in a terminal. If you have errors you can see very fast where they are located/clustered in the file and can already tell just by the shape of the program where it is.

    I use LSP integration to see a complete list of errors/warnings and jump to them.

    Another example: GUI color picker directly in my editor as a tooltip above color values in css/html templates.

    That's for design, not text editing ;)

    inline preview of latex or Template fragments.

    I will use a latex or markdown language server that renders to a browser tab.

    To be fair, I don't do HTML/JS/CSS, so I bet VSCode or other GUI editors are great for that. But that's specifically because you want to see something rendered. Most of the time you can just see it in an actual browser next to your text editor though.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Conversly, I see nothing a TUI editor can do better than a GUI, including use of the keyboard

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago*

    Yea I think I agree with you there, at least theoretically. In practice I've found that it's easier to use a TUI editor over SSH, and they require less resources, but that usually isn't noticeable on my PC. TUI editors can also run inside tmux, which is very nice if you are a tmux user.

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