The quest for perfectionism

OK, what’s happened since my last post? Well, I’ve been busy coding, using the Zend IDE
exclusively. It hasn’t crashed once, although javaw.exe is taking up between 65 and 120Mb of RAM which is making my computer sluggish at times.

I’ve been recommended to look at TruStudio, so I will give that a test. It’s also been pointed out that if I’m going to use the IDE a lot then limiting the price and ending up with something that doesn’t help much is not a good idea. While the thought of spending a few hundred pounds on an IDE goes against the grain (particularly when I want to get Photoshop CS2) I understand the point being made, and have therefore removed my price limit.

What’s my current testing list look like?

* Zend Studio 4.02
* “PHPEd”:http://www.nusphere.com
* “Eclipse”:http://www.eclipse.org with “Xored TruStudio”:http://www.xored.com
* “Eclipse”:http://www.eclipse.org with “PHPEclipse”:http://www.phpeclipse.de
* “Gvim”:http://www.vim.org (putting it off, but “will use these tips”:http://www.schlitt.info/applications/blog/index.php?/archives/331-Comfortable-PHP-editing-with-VIM-3.html)
* “Maguma”:http://www.maguma.com (maybe, but getting doubtful as no help from their support)
* “ActiveState Komodo”:http://www.activestate.com
* “VS.Php”:http://www.jcxsoftware.com/vs.php

One question that keeps coming up is “Can the editor be Windows-only, or does it have to be cross-platform?”. My current thinking is that Windows only is fine, because although I have enjoyed playing with a Linux desktop, I run Windows XP on my main machine and have no reason to change.

Maybe I’m going for a too heavy environment, and an editor with a debugger would do. I don’t know, it throws out a whole load of extra options to evaluate…

It’s time to take stock of my requirements again. This list is going to grow over the next few days as I think of them (I really should have written them down as they came to me while coding).

h3. Requirements

# It must offer code insight to files within PHP’s include_path (eg PEAR libraries). This saves me going online to the manual every time to check the syntax… and if the editor’s smart enough to compile a dictionary of functions/classes/methods in these files rather than rescanning the file every time, so much the better.
# I would really like debugging which can be built into the server. So when something stops working in my home-grown application framework, I can use a debugger to see what’s going on in each file, rather than adding print and print_r statements to many files.
# Code templates - so I don’t have to type every character in a foreach loop or class statement for example. Most editors provide this.

h3. Non-requirements

* CVS integration - I use “TortoiseCVS”:http://www.tortoisecvs.org and “TortoiseSVN”:http://www.tortoisesvn.org which integrate beautifully wherever the Windows file browser is used.
* Bloat. Stupid memory usage is out. Although judging by the performance of the market leader, I can’t be too picky on this.

h3. Would be nice to have

* Code folding. It does make moving around long files nicer.
* UML/refactoring. A vague requirement because I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but I’ve reached the point where I see an advantage in using UML while designing/planning.

Like most things, and however hard I try not to, I am looking for perfection. I know I’m not likely to find the perfect IDE out there ( in a perfect world I wouldn’t be using PHP ) but something that suits and speeds up my development.

..when you find yourself smiling and making all the normal facial expressions you’d use in a face-to-face conversation to a MSN chat window.

And then blog about it.

Time for a break…

Right, well I’ve finally got a large-ish PHP project to get to grips with. Proper PHP code to be written, and a local Linux server (”Ubuntu”:http://www.ubuntulinux.org 5.04)to test it on (that’s why it’s been quiet recently - I’ve been struggling to get the server configured. GD causes PHP to segfault, but that’s another story).

Anyway, the experience has been going from bad to worse. Because of the price of Zend Studio I’ve not been testing that, although I will use it today. However, “PHPEdit”:http://www.phpedit.net is crashing randomly, and I’ve got a reproducible crash in “Maguma”:http://www.maguma.com. (Firefox also crashed yesterday when loading my dev page, but that’s another story). The tools are getting in the way of my work!

Whatever client I use, I don’t need built-in CVS support. I’m developing on Windows, and TortoiseCVS and TortoiseSVN integrate nicely with the file browsers in the tools.

OK, the way the others are behaving I’m driven to Zend. The first thing I found was that I couldn’t open the files I wanted to from a SAMBA’d drive, as the *File System Browser* or the *File -> Open* dialogue wouldn’t navigate any of my network places. In the end I opened up Windows Explorer and dragged and dropped the file, which was fine.

On “Norbert’s”:http://norbert.mocsnik.hu/blog/ suggestion I tried mapping the share to a drive letter, which worked fine.

H4. 3.47pm

This is bad, I’m really enjoying the Zend IDE Apart from the lack of code folding which I do miss, and that I haven’t figured out how to get insight into PEAR classes yet, it’s going well. There’s so much of it to learn and explore (I haven’t figured out if the PHPDoc comments can be auto-generated for example).

Certainly all the gripes about Zend Studio which Davey Shafik notes in “this post”:http://www.pixelated-dreams.com/archives/57-TruStudio-1.0RC1-Mini-Review.html are noticable, while the ones in his “mini-review of Zend studio 4.0beta”:http://www.pixelated-dreams.com/archives/60-Zend-Studio-4.0beta-Mini-Review.html I haven’t come across.

Update: reading “Norbert’s post”:http://norbert.mocsnik.hu/blog/archives/118-Zend-Development-Environment-4.0.0-beta-+-Zend-Studio-Server.html I see why code completion for PEAR isn’t working - I haven’t defined a project.

I’ve been away over the weekend and then reading Harry Potter, so this entry got delayed…

Well I wasn’t intending to write anything today and get some programming done instead, but frustrations while programming have changed that!

First up is PHPEdit: it’s mis-identifying class variables as global variables, so the code completion when typing a class variable inside a class method gives @$foo@ not @$this->foo@. Time for another bug report methinks… especially as in the beta version this worked fine.

Maguma was exactly the same, but even worse as if I typed @$this->@ within my class it would come up with “Unable to find object definiton”.

I finally installed Zend Studio today, I know it’s fateful to install something outside my budget, but I wanted to see what its features were like. First impressions were that it was complex. Very
It fared a bit better than PHPEdit and Maguma at completing class variables, but not as well as I was hoping.

I still haven’t heard anything back from Maguma support in response to my question. I’m certainly not impressed, so if anyone would like to have a go “answering my question”:http://forums.maguma.com/viewtopic.php?t=863 be my guest.

I filed two support requests yesterday, one with PHPEdit for a popup/autocomplete behaviour I thought silly, and the other with Maguma to see if it will do code insight for files in your PHP include_path.

I’ve had replies to both: A reply to my post in the Maguma forum saying it had been forwarded to a developer; and Sebastien Hordeux, the (lead?) developer of PHPEdit replied and after exchanging a couple of emails and flash-screencaptures registered it as a bug. One up to PHPEdit for a quick response (even if the others don’t have the problem in the first place)

So far I’m using PHPEdit as my default editor and have hardly touched the others, which probably means I’m biased as it feels familiar from previous use
I installed PHP Expert Editor and Rapid PHP 2005 today. PHP Expert Editor can be crossed off immediately; it doesn’t even provide code completion for class methods when the class is in the same file, let alone in an external file.

Rapid PHP 2005 is more of an editor rather than an IDE. It’s got a lot of tools to help write HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I already have “Topstyle”:http://www.regnow.com/softsell/visitor.cgi?affiliate=46464&action=site&vendor=6598 for these which I like. All in all it’s a good tool I guess for most web developers, but not for heavy PHP development. I’ve crossed it off my list as well.

I was also shocked by this PHP Snippet provided in the Rapid PHP:

bc. for (var i=1; i=max_i; i++) {
…

If that’s PHP then I’m a fish.

What else have I explored today?

Maguma Workbench offers a code template system like PHPEdit, but I can’t find any help on how to set it up. It also has code collapsing - a wonderful feature like collapsing folder trees but for source code which allows one to navigate and explore code much faster. I’ve had this before when using a Python editor and also once when I played with gVim and loved it.

Talking of gVim… “Ian P. Christian”:http://www.pookey.co.uk suggested I try it as well, as he uses Vim entirely for authoring PHP code (and manages without a debugger). I’ve installed it, and can see a vertical learning curve ahead!

Back on the subject of Maguma, the icons don’t seem anywhere near as overbearing as yesterday. In fact being bigger it’s easier to click on them rather than another icon by mistake.

I was stupid enough to let Maguma’s installation overwrite my php.ini - and because I had to do two installations to get the licensing thingy to work it overwrote the backup of my original php.ini. Grrrr.

Well, the summer’s here and it’s time for the silly season to start - sorting out software to use which I really should have made a decision about earlier.

Investigating PHP IDEs was the first task, now it’s RSS Readers. I’ve been using Opera 8’s built-in reader, but since “going back to Firefox”:http://peter.mapledesign.co.uk/weblog/archives/opera_lover_concedes_defeat.html it’s been getting annoying to fire up this browser just to read my feeds (another footprint in my memory)

So… stand-alone program time. Rule 1 is that the program must be free. So I’ve been testing:

# “RSSBandit”:http://www.rssbandit.org 1.3.0.29
# “GreatNews”:http://www.curiostudio.com 1.0 Beta (Build 315)
# “Sauce Reader”:http://www.synop.com/Products/SauceReader/ 2.0.1(Beta)

“RSSBandit”:http://www.rssbandit.orgis definitely free; I am unsure about GreatNews, it’s still in beta form and no mention of a price at present.

Rule 2 is that it has to fit in with my use of a RSS reader: I use it as a way to keep and archive articles of interest. Any I don’t want (lots) I delete, so this deleting process needs to be as easy as possible. This means using and to select items.

I like the newspaper display of items, but if this is present and I’m deleting items, I want the display to update, not change to a single-item display.

A lot of problems come about because RSS readers treat items as if they were email, a metaphor I can never understand. A different approach is clearly needed IMO.

h3. Day 1.

“GreatNews”:http://www.curiostudio.comhas the attraction of synching with “Bloglines”:http://www.bloglines.com which allows you to read the RSS feeds whether on the move or at your computer. I love this feature, although I’ve never been ecstatic about the Bloglines interface. Now honestly, why I like it so much I’m not sure as I’ve usually got my laptop with me, but there you go… I guess the biggest advantage is that my blogroll on this website is always up-to-date.

and don’t select multiple items in GreatNews, so you have to delete items

In a way it’s an unfair comparison as “GreatNews”:http://www.curiostudio.comis still in beta before the release of the first version, while the other two programs are mature. However life isn’t fair and I’m testing now
RSSBandit, like all the other programs, has a cool interface. I’ve done most of my reading in it so far, mainly because I didn’t get round to installing “Sauce Reader”:http://www.synop.com/Products/SauceReader/until later on.

“Sauce Reader”:http://www.synop.com/Products/SauceReader/has a cool “Show in Groups” feature which groups the items by date. It also has an integrated weblog editor (to write a post in) which would be fine if I didn’t care about the HTML produced at the end. The other feature I really liked is the way you can delete items from the newspaper view - hello, anyone else think this is a good idea? This feature alone is putting it strides ahead of the others.

I’ll keep you posted as I progress with using them. If there’s any others you think I should play with, post a comment to this entry and I’ll install them.

Now the summer’s come and things are slack (got work for a freelancer? “Contact me!”:peter@mapledesign.co.uk) I’m testing out PHP IDEs. I’m after something to make life that little bit easier…

I have a couple of solid criteria which any editor I use must measure up against:

# It must offer code insight to files within PHP’s include_path (eg PEAR libraries). This saves me going online to the manual every time to check the syntax… and if the editor’s smart enough to compile a dictionary of functions/classes/methods in these files rather than rescanning the file every time, so much the better.
# I would really like debugging which can be built into the server. So when something stops working in my home-grown application framework, I can use a debugger to see what’s going on in each file, rather than adding @print@ and @print_r@ statements to many files.

Another criteria for me is the cost. Zend studio is out of reach, unless some kind team member (hello Andi, hello Zeev) gives me a discount. I’m looking at a max of around £100. And if it does Python as well or other languages, so much the better.

An extensive search on Google turned up the following (a bit overdramatic, Google quickly turned up “php-editors”:http://www.php-editors.com/ which supplied most of them). The editors which I have downloaded for testing are:

* “Maguma Workbench”:http://www.maguma.com 2.5.0
* “EnginSite Editor for PHP”:http://www.enginsite.com/php-editor.htm 3.1.2 build 176
* Zend Studio 4.0.2 (out of my budget)
* “PHPEdit”:http://www.phpedit.net 1.2.3.159
* “NuSphere PHPEd”:http://www.nusphere.com 3.3.3 (again out of my budget)
* “PHP Expert Editor”:http://www.ankord.com/phpxedit.html 3.3
* “RapidPHP 2005″:http://www.blumentals.net/rapidphp/ 6.0
* “ActiveState Komodo”:http://www.activestate.com/Products/Komodo/ 3.1 (probably out of budget, but does many languages?)

Noticeable about many of the packages is the distinct lack of instructions. I’m supposed to figure out how to debug apps on the server myself? Mmmm. My intelligence isn’t *that* high
Which warrants a disclaimer: some of these editors may do what I want, and it’s my stupidity which can’t figure out how to do it. You have been warned.

I am installing these editors on a 1.7GHz laptop with 640Mb RAM, running Windows XP Home edition.

I’ve been using PHPEdit for a number of years now, sticking with the last free version 0.8.0.25. While this is OK, it doesn’t fulfil 1 or 2 above. The latest version is much less flaky and satisfies point 1. I liked the speed, better than Maguma. The “New File” templates were cool, although how useful in the long run who knows.

EnginSite Editor seemed to be a real mix of PHP and HTML editing tools. It’s got a swish interface, although I really didn’t understand the painter tool which allowed you to draw boxes and join them with lines… is this a UML design tool? It has a stupid number of templates, some pre-implemented algorithms there which wouldn’t be of use most of the time. It did not seem aware of PHP’s include_path, neither could I find a way to make it. The code complete was also blank on my installation. I will have to try uninstalling and reinstalling (at some point).

Maguma Workbench, like their site, is very pretty. Whoever is their graphic designer should be congratulated. It is however a little overwhelming in the editor, even on my 15″ 1600×1200 screen the icons were huge in the default theme. The registration process was very tricky, but at the third attempt I figured out what was needed - why no instructions?

That’s all I’ve installed so far…

Friends keep asking me about registering domain names, setting up hosting and generally running website stuff, and this post collects the links together so I don’t have to keep telling them

h3. Domain names

I use “123-Reg”:http://www.123-reg.co.uk/affiliate.cgi?id=AF77350 for UK domain names. It has brilliant features in the domain name control panel and a very low price.

For .com/.org/.net registration I use Gandi.net.  Originally one of the more eccentric domain registrars (being translated from French to English didn’t help) their site has just been redesigned and now looks fabulous.  They aren’t the cheapest domain registration but come under the stricter EU privacy laws, which is why I prefer them to a US registrar.
If you want something distinctive you can get a “.tv domain”:http://www.tkqlhce.com/click-1707693-10356519. One of my clients did this because it was the only way they could purchase the domain they wanted.

h3. Hosting

You pays your money, you takes your pick. I’m not going to give an all-out recommendation (if I did now doubt the hosting company’s servers would collapse and my briends would become ex-friends

I currently host most sites with “DreamHost”:http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?116334.  Feature for feature I don’t believe there is any other provider that offers them for such a low price.  I can host unlimited domains, they provide over 20GB of disk space and basically “unlimited bandwidth”:http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?116334 - which is very useful for photo galleries!  They don’t lack control either - I can install my own PHP binary and most other programs I want (e.g. SVN, Rails, Django).  It’s like the freedom of a dedicated server without the cost!
h3. Conclusion

I think that should answer most questions that I’ve been asked so far!

Page Revised 1 August 2006.

Found via the ADSLguide forum: you can buy “filtered faceplates”:http://www.clarity.it/telecoms/adsl_faceplate.htm from Clarity which apparently help with ADSL connections on particular lines. Worth remembering in case this, rather than ISP problems, should ever come back to haunt me

Exams are over for another 6 months, so I’m starting work on next year’s project. Because I’m going to be producing 10-20 000 words in total for my Masters report, and also writing course material, I have decided it’s time to raise my sights above Microsoft Word. I love beauty, I love the flow of well-typeset prose… all of which points to Latex.

The problem is… I am actually a very visual person. Sure I program, but only if the code I write is colour coded. My other hobbies are much more artistic. So writing Latex commands by hand is not attractive.

I’ve therefore been casting around for visual latex editors. 3 years of being a student is taking its toll, so I’m not buying any software (incidentally, I’m undertaking freelance web design/programming work over the summer - “contact me”:peter@mapledesign.co.uk if you have a project that needs completing).

Ideally any solution would run on Windows XP as that’s what I’m used to and have everything else running on.

I first looked at “LyX”:http://www.lyx.org/ which I remembered from the past. However its Windows port didn’t seem to have progressed far (previously I’d tried it and had problems), so I continued looking.

If I wanted to write LaTex by hand, “LaTeX Editor”:http://www.latexeditor.org/ looks ideal, and definitely worth anyone checking out as a replacement for WinEdit.

One option could be to use OpenOffice. There are some interesting addons to help with LaTeX - “OOoLatexEquation”:http://www.fyma.ucl.ac.be/wiki/~piroux/OOo macro to allow Latex equations to be inserted into OpenOffice documents; or an “export converter”:http://www.hj-gym.dk/~hj/writer2latex/ to produce LaTex files from OpenOffice documents.

While not free (I’m weakening…) “BaKoMa TeX Word”:http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/win32/bakoma/ promises “true WYSIWYG LaTeX editing”. I haven’t given it a test drive yet, but will do so very soon.

As the report I’m producing isn’t terribly mathematical, maybe I am wrong in looking at LaTeX to provide decent typesetting? Perhaps there’s another solution that would work just as well?

Particularly for course material (which is for an introductory programming course) I’m very tempted to write it in XHTML, as I wamt the online course notes to be interactive with quizzes etc. Although then I have the problem of getting nicely-formatted printed notes…