Free text editor with Pascal syntax highlighting?

[Dreamscape]

Hi everyone! I'm a new Mac user... I just got a really nice and small iBook yesterday, and it's the first Mac computer I've ever used! It's very cool Right now I'm looking for some free text editor for it which would support syntax highlighting of Object Pascal code, because that would be really useful for doing some school stuff. I found one text editor with syntax highlighting, but unfortunately it doesn't support Pascal... Does anyone know about such program which supports it?

 

[cazabam]

which one did you try? Smultron supports Pascal so it might be worth a shot?

 

[Dreamscape]

The one I tried is called mi... Thanks for telling me about Smultron, I'll check it out. Right now I've just downloaded Vim for Mac and I'll check if it works...

 

[cazabam]

I was going to suggest Vim, but many people take one look at go "eck! what's this??!! I can't just type!?!"

 

[Dreamscape]

I thought exactly the same thing Well, I almost decided to stay with it, until I noticed that the backspace (delete) key just moves the cursor to the left, but without deleting anything... then I gave up. But I'll try again tomorrow.

And Smultron says that my operating system is too old... it's 10.4.3. Looks like I have to download and install many updates before I'll be able to use it...

 

[cazabam]

You should be able to get to 10.4.8 just using the Software Update feature.

Vim is a fantastic editor but with a very strange (for a modern editor) UI paradigm. Backspace actually does delete a character, but only in insert mode. Normally you'd use x. I use Vim for all my editing, but I wouldn't force it on somebody who didn't want it; life's too short

 

[Dreamscape]

Yes, I've noticed that feature... but the problem is that at the moment I have no way to connect my iBook to the internet. My desktop computer's wireless card is connected to a really big antenna on the roof of the house, and that's how I have internet on it. Maybe there's a way to connect my iBook to the desktop computer with a network cable and somehow connect the iBook to the internet through my desktop PC, but I have no idea how to do it...

Thanks for telling me, I'll try using the insert mode. I've noticed that Vim has Pascal syntax highlighting, so I could use it. I have a question about it, though... does it have a feature (I don't know how it's called) which automatically adds spaces at the beginning of each line if there were also spaces before the previous line?

 

[cazabam]

Yes, it's called 'autoindent' in Vim. You can set it by typing:

:set autoindent

when you're in command mode. If you're serious about getting to grips with Vim, start it up and stay in command mode, and type:

:help tutorial

This will guide you through most things, including how to have settings stick (hint, you put them in ~/.vimrc)

Did you try Smultron's Pascal mode too? It's a more 'mac-like' application if you find that Vim is overwhelming. TextWrangler is the other one I forgot about earlier

 

[dtravis7]

I was also going to suggest TextWrangler. It's free and does support a lot of stuff like that. It can't hurt to download it and see if it does what you want.

 

[Dreamscape]

Thanks

I haven't been able to try Smultron yet (I need to update my system first), but I'm going to try TextWrangler

 

[technologist]

TextWrangler does support Object Pascal highlighting.

 

[Dreamscape]

Yes, I checked it and it's good... I also updated my system, and Smultron works now. I like it, and I'm going to keep both of them.

 

[tiina303]

Can I run Pascal code with smutron? How?