[IPython-dev] Ace versus CodeMirror

Brian Granger ellisonbg at gmail.com
Sun Jan 22 16:56:25 EST 2012


Hi,

Recently, we added the ability for users to edit a single cell in the
notebook using the Ace editor.  I think Fernando and I have been under
the impression that Ace was a more featureful editor that power users
would want for serious dev work in the notebook.  Here is my take on
this:

* Ace has better support for keyboard bindings (emacs/vim), although a
recent version of CodeMirror has improved this situation.
* Ace has more keyboard actions out of the box, such as indentation of blocks.
* Fernando and others have remarked that CodeMirror was not quite as
nice as Ace.  I have this vague sense, but it is difficult to say
exactly what is better.
* Hmm...

Some questions:

* Is Ace really that much better that it is worth us shipping/using it?
* Do people like the ability to edit a single cell in a
more-full-window capacity?

Please check out the Ace capabilty in master and let us know what you think...

Thanks,

Brian

-- 
Brian E. Granger
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
bgranger at calpoly.edu and ellisonbg at gmail.com



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