The following gif demonstrates folding:

Kate,kdevelop,xed,mousepad,gnome builder.,notepad next(clone notepad++)
That’s a lot of options! Thank you.
Geany(Its a lightweight GTK Based IDE)
Too low on the list
Thank you!
Question: According to this table, Geany’s capabilities might leave some to desire when it comes to code/text folding. Is this correct? Or is the table simply outdated?
Yw and I think it’s up to date that list (i just looked at article last updated)
Thank you for confirming my suspicions. I took it for a test run and wasn’t able to replicate the above functionality either. Hopefully it’s an error on my side, but it’s very possible that I will not stick to Geany.
Did you try plugins but sure it’s fine
I have looked into plugins, but nothing I’ve found suggests to contain/offer the desired functionality.
ahh okay
Aight. Anyhow, this has been a lovely conversation fam! Thanks for your contributions!
There’s also Zed. And helix.
Amongst all the other great alts here
Also neovim is really dope! Just have to throw that there
There’s also Zed.
Noted. Thank you!
And helix.
I believe this doesn’t have folding (yet). Unfortunately.
Also neovim is really dope! Just have to throw that there
xD , Neovim is definitely pretty cool.
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I have to agree with the positivism surrounding Kate. It has been the only one (together with KDevelop) out of the 5 text editors I’ve installed and tested since yesterday that actually did what I desired from it. Props to the devs! Let’s see if it can dethrone Emacs 😜.
SublimeText?
Looks cool. Thanks!
Uhmm…, did I understand correctly that it’s not open source?
Not op but no it’s not.
Thank you for the clarification!
While I didn’t mention it explicitly in the post, I do intend to stick to open source.
Sublime Text is not open-source but it has a sane price and a WinRAR-style trial. I use it because it feels a lot snappier than other editors/IDEs I’ve tried when browsing large files.
On the one hand, it’s a shame that it’s not open-source, but on the other hand, developers have to make a living from something.
I use it because it feels a lot snappier than other editors/IDEs I’ve tried when browsing large files.
Snappiness is definitely something I appreciate. So, if it blows everything else out of the water in this respect, that I might have to concede. Thank you for mentioning this particular aspect of it!
On the one hand, it’s a shame that it’s not open-source, but on the other hand, developers have to make a living from something.
I wholeheartedly agree. But, I prefer the capability to donate to the open-source software developers that I love to support.
It’s definitely not faster than vim, fwiw.
Thank you for this crucial piece of information! Much appreciated!
As such, Sublime Text has (kinda) lost all of its relevancy for me.
I wholeheartedly agree. But, I prefer the capability to donate to the open-source software developers that I love to support.
Right indeed, not sure why it was implied that open source software couldn’t be a financially viable option for developers too.
Couldn’t agree more.
Btw, I would like to take this chance to thank you and @winety@lemmy.zip for the civil, respectful, engaging and informative conversation you were having elsewhere!
On the one hand, it’s a shame that it’s not open-source, but on the other hand, developers have to make a living from something.
I’m pretty sure most people here, at least I hope, who use open source and free software directly money donate to developers. I know of plenty of developers who do get paid writing open source through such donations or via funding, e.g. NLNet or grants. Maybe I’m misunderstanding your statement, are you saying Sublime Text isn’t open source because they believe those ways are not appropriate for them?
I wrote a whole comment in which I mused about the reason why Sublime Text isn’t open-source. However, a brief search found one developer’s answer: They just don’t think that typical FOSS funding is sustainable for their particular project.
FWIW I’m donating every month to CodeMirror author, donates to Vim, etc. I’m not saying they are wrong, nor right, solely that implying (but maybe I misunderstood the comment) that somehow open-source and getting paid are antagonist is IMHO damaging to FLOSS broadly.
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If I said I knew exactly what I was talking about, I’d be lying. But it’s generally accepted that funding of open-source is not in an ideal state.
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Thank you for mentioning Lapce!
I have been interested in Lapce for a long time. Unfortunately, IIUC, it doesn’t support folding Markdown headings as shown in the gif. At least, I wasn’t able to get it to work. Can you attest to this? Or am I doing something wrong? Your aid would be much appreciated!
Look at Helix and Zed.
Zed is the goat
Do you happen to have a lot of experience with other text editors (and/or IDEs)? If so, would you like to chime in and compare Zed to the ones you feel confident talking about?
Thanks in advance!
Thanks for the recommendations! Helix doesn’t seem to offer this functionality (yet). Unfortunately…
As for Zed, it does seem to be capable of reproducing the functionality found in the gif (or at least to some extent). However, installing it on my distro isn’t pretty. Therefore, I wish to install it at some point, but I’ll wait it out for now.
Will probably get airstriked for this, but Zed is also a option.
Also, if you’re using GNOME, then try GNOME builder. And if you’re using KDE, then try KDevelop or Kate.
Thank you for your recommendations!
Hopefully I’ll get around to take Zed for a test drive in the near future.
As for GNOME Builder, for some reason, I wasn’t able to replicate what’s seen above with it. Perhaps it doesn’t support Markdown that well. Or…, it needs/requires a plugin to do its bidding. Would you happen to know more on this? Any help is appreciated!
KDevelop and Kate, on the other hand, have been a very pleasant surprise. I have literally checked about a dozen of text editors since yesterday, and these two have been the only ones that have yielded the desired result. Props and kudos to the dev team!
i’ve heard that some people love using kate because, with some plugins, it really can do all most people need. i’ve seen a dude make a video on it but would need some time to find it again if there was any interest.
Textadept!.
Yet another one I’ve never heard of before. Thank you so much for mentioning it!
There’s got to be a Micro plug-in for this.
WAIT, if I’m reading this right, it’s had code folding since last year: https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/pull/2942
I’m gonna try this right nowThanks a lot for putting in the work! Uhmm…, how has testing been? Were you able to pull this off with Markdown?
I got distracted. At first glance, it seems that PR was for the groundworks, I haven’t been able to figure out how to actually do it. I’ll try again in a bit.
Ah xD, no problem fam! Please keep us updated :P .
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Interesting. First time reading about it*. Were it not for you, this might have been completely off the radar. So thank you for mentioning it!
But I’d guess that for most tasks, Emacs org-mode is the most powerful option.
Yeah, it has been slowly growing on me 😜. But I would like to explore all other options before I fully commit.
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LEO definitely looks like a cool project. It has made me curious and I would like to try it out. Thanks (again)!
However, before I do, I would like to verify if folding[1] a section/heading in Markdown -as demonstrated in the gif- is possible with LEO. Could you please confirm this for me?
Also, good support for literate programming, which is Don Knuth’s perhaps greatest idea.
Very interesting concept. I believe I stumbled upon this video about a week ago. Together with two other videos, It has been at the very top of “Watch Later”-list since. But I haven’t gotten around to watch it yet 😅. I believe the topics are related. Am I right? Regardless, I’ll definitely take a deeper look into literate programming. Thank you for mentioning it!
Also known as collapse/expand ↩︎
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You’ve already discovered the best editor. There’s no need to explore more. ;)
Hehe 😜. Perhaps the purpose of this exploration is to cement the idea that I’m already on the best 😂. We’ll see 😉.
Sublime.
Thank you! Unfortunately, I’ve come to the understanding it’s not open source. So it’s unlikely I’ll go for it.
UPDATE: For posterity’s sake, I’d like to reflect on the last couple of days.
First of all, I’d like to thank everyone that has contributed to the discussion! Were it not for your recommendations/suggestions/endorsements, then I might not have found a valid alternative.
Secondly, I’ve taken every single recommendation pretty seriously. As such, I’ve either installed them to see for myself if I was able to reproduce the functionality found in the gif found above. Or, didn’t install them to begin with due to the suggested installation methods not passing through my (rather) strict policy on software. Regardless, in the end, I’ve only found two pieces of software that satisfied the bill: Kate and KDevelop.
KDevelop is pretty cool, but is more of an IDE rather than a text editor. As such, I’ve landed on Kate.
But, perhaps more than anything, I’ve come to really appreciate Emacs (and Neovim). And, perhaps more than ever, I feel ready to take them on 💪. Wish me luck 😊.
ED IS THE STANDARD EDITOR
If you’re not trolling, then I’d like to offer my apologies for assuming you were.
Perhaps I shouldn’t feed the trolls, but I couldn’t resist: does
edeven support the functionality demonstrated in the gif above? I’m asking this from a genuine position of ignorance.Honestly: Yeah, i was trolling (kind of), but:
I DO like to code via ED because the design and workflow of ED (or even better: Sam) makes folding unnecessary because you only put on the screen what is needed right at that moment. Want to see two functions 1000 lines apart? No problem, just print them right below each other on the screen.
Interesting insights. Much appreciated!
I DO like to code via ED because the design and workflow of ED (or even better: Sam) makes folding unnecessary because you only put on the screen what is needed right at that moment. Want to see two functions 1000 lines apart? No problem, just print them right below each other on the screen.
Hmm…, I suppose this is a workflow I’d have to try out for myself before drawing any conclusions. Though, I got some questions:
- Why
ed? Isn’t any other TUI/CLI text editor fit for the job? Apologies if I sound obtuse/obnoxious*. I’m probably just very ignorant of howedfares compared to the others. - Is there any currently maintained version of Sam? A quick search suggests that everyone packaged/grabbed it from this github repo. But, unfortunately, that one has been archived since earlier this year. I suppose I could look into the many forks it has, but I’d rather be picky 😅. Got any pointers for me?
Why ed? Well, it keeps my brain from rotting 😀 just half joking… i have noticed that whenever i use a somewhat more “user friendly” software my mind starts to wander off more easily and instead of being more focussed on the programming task i shortly after find myself doing… $THING instead of being productive. So, being the only jack-of-all-trades-computer-guy in a small-ish company i tend to chose the tools that work for me, even if they are a bit… anachronistic.
I think the best maintained version of Sam would be the one included in 9front (if you want some truely special experience) or if you want to stay (somewhat) in the realm of the sane you can use plan9port which also brings in many nice tools out of the Plan9 ecosystem.
Aight. This conversation has been much appreciated, thanks fam!
Perhaps I might have to give
eda go at some point if I find myself hacking more with elisp rather than outputting actual productive work. But, at least for now, this is (thankfully) not really a concern for mine 😜.As for Sam, I should either install a different OS (i.e. 9front) for the truely special experience. Or…, build it (myself) with plan9port. Did I get that right?
Well regarding plan9port, it is really, really easy to acquire… just clone the Github repo (https://github.com/9fans/plan9port), run ./INSTALL and everything else sorts itself out ;-)
Hehe, you read right through me 😂. Thanks fam for the heads up!
Anyhow, I’ve learned so much from you and I really appreciate that. Again, wholeheartedly, thank you!
Wish ya a good one 😉!
- Why










