A tip: Code editor for ACL

KarlJohanKleist · ‎Oct 13, 2011

A developer's most important tool is without doubt the code editor. When I ditched Linux on the desktop two years ago (the tipping point was when a buggy X driver fried my graphic adapter), and started to enjoy Windows 7, I needed a replacement for Emacs. In my earlier life in Sweden I'd been using Textpad from Helios Software for a decade, but this product seemed to have reached "maintenance mode" (esp. regarding handling of Unicode).

So I spent several days searching a commercial code editor suitable for ACL. Finally i decided to buy Zeus (http://zeusedit.com).

Don't let the somewhat unprofessionally crafted website fool you. Or the slightly old-fashioned looks of the GUI. This is an extremely powerful, mature and stable product. It doesn't aim to be an all-purpose texteditor (like UltraEdit). The target audience is programmers.

I'm attaching a "keyword information file" defining the "document type" ACL (see http://www.zeusedit.com/zforum/viewtopic.php?t=176). It defines not only highlighting, but also the "function navigator", see the attached screen dump.

How to enable "code folding" is described here: http://www.zeusedit.com/zforum/viewtopic.php?t=6191

Have fun!

K J

GarethOakes · ‎Oct 13, 2011

Most of the guys here are using Notepad++ but this Zeus thing looks kind of
interesting, thanks for sharing!

I'm still using vi on Windows (well, gvim to be precise). If anyone wants
ACL "doctype" for Vim similar to this one for Zeus let me know J

-G

LynnHales · ‎Oct 14, 2011

I've been a long time user of CodeWright. Unfortunately, it is no longer supported (it is still sold for FULL list price though) by Borland.

I love that app. Great programming tool, reg ex searches, file grep, and numerous other nice features. Borland really screwed up with that one.

Lynn

---- Gareth Oakes <goakes@gpslsolutions.com> wrote:
> Most of the guys here are using Notepad++ but this Zeus thing looks kind of
> interesting, thanks for sharing!
>
>
>
> I'm still using vi on Windows (well, gvim to be precise). If anyone wants
> ACL "doctype" for Vim similar to this one for Zeus let me know J
>
>
>
> -G
>
>
>

ClayHelberg · ‎Oct 14, 2011

OK, I'll throw my $0.02 in on the subject.

I do 99% of my Arbortext development in jEdit (www.jedit.org). It's open source, it has a wide variety of excellent plug-ins (including XML and XSLT), and is easily extensible. It supports multi-file search with regex, code folding, syntax highlighting, version control system integration, and all the usual developer goodies.

I have developed some add-ons to support ACL development in jEdit. If anyone is interested, let me know and I'll send them to you.

--Clay

Clay Helberg
Senior Consultant
TerraXML

jsulak · ‎Oct 18, 2011

I'm a bit late to the thread, but since Gareth chimed in with vi, I'm contractually obligated to mention that I've been using Emacs on Windows for several years with good results. It's a little bit of a hassle to set up on Windows - you have to install Cygwin to get all the commands (like rgrep) that punt out to the shell - but great once you get there.

There's a good ACL mode at

steve.thompson4 · ‎Oct 18, 2011

Software installation rules preclude me using this here, but I'd definitely appreciate further info that I could forward home.

Thanks!
Steve Thompson
+1(316)977-0515

GarethOakes · ‎Oct 25, 2011

.. and I'm contractually obligated to heap scorn upon Emacs users!! 🙂

-G

KarlJohanKleist · ‎Oct 25, 2011

You all know what emacs actually means, don't you?

    escape meta alt control shift

P.S. I'm a great fan of emacs. On linux. 

In Reply to Gareth Oakes:

.. and I'm contractually obligated to heap scorn upon Emacs users!! 🙂

-G

ClayHelberg · ‎Oct 26, 2011

Yeah, I used Emacs for a while, until I started getting carpal tunnel syndrome from all the chording....

FWIW, jEdit is also the same across platforms, including convenient access to the plug-in repository.

--C

ebenton · ‎Oct 26, 2011

That sort of reminds me of the Dilbert "Demons of Stupidity" strip where the software developer says, "I'll make the command easy to remember, like 'CTRL-ALT-F4-DEL'."

jsillari · ‎Oct 26, 2011

That is easy. Remember, emacs has a lisp mode too.

John Sillari

mramshaw · ‎Oct 26, 2011

I am very interested in this and will try installing jedit first and checking it out. If I like it, I would appreciate it if I could get those add-ons from you. It's probably time to move into at least the 20th century with Arbortext development here. Textpad with a java profile is not hacking it anymore.

In Reply to Clay Helberg:

OK, I'll throw my $0.02 in on the subject.

I do 99% of my Arbortext development in jEdit (www.jedit.org). It's open source, it has a wide variety of excellent plug-ins (including XML and XSLT), and is easily extensible. It supports multi-file search with regex, code folding, syntax highlighting, version control system integration, and all the usual developer goodies.

I have developed some add-ons to support ACL development in jEdit. If anyone is interested, let me know and I'll send them to you.

--Clay

Clay Helberg
Senior Consultant
TerraXML

steve.thompson4 · ‎Oct 26, 2011

Or perhaps is JUST hacking it?

Sorry. Never could resist anything the least bit punny.

Steve Thompson
+1(316)977-0515

jsulak · ‎Oct 26, 2011

I haven't had trouble with my hands, but I'll see how I feel in a few more years... I've found that mapping the control key to caps lock, and replacing M-x with C-x C-m (and so avoiding the alt key) helps a lot, though.

It's definitely not an intuitive interface, but I've gotten so used to some of the features that I would miss in other editors (easily splitting the screen into arbitrary divisions, IDO-everywhere mode + smex, undo tree, dired mode, shell mode, etc.) that it's worth it to me. Emacs (and vim too) have very active communities, so if it doesn't behave exactly like you want, you can usually find a bit of code to fix it.

And Gareth, was vim in Tron? I didn't think so.

ClayHelberg · ‎Oct 26, 2011

Hi Mike (and anyone else who's interested)--

I posted a copy of my jEdit ACL tools on the adepters.org wiki. You can
find the download link on the "Developer Utilities" page
(

mbushby · ‎May 22, 2012

Hi all,

I'm curious as to the general practice regarding the Publishing Engine.

Is it recommended to have two: one for production and one for testing new PTC software releases and
new applications?

Or is it usual to expect a production stop during upgrade and testing?

-- Martin

Martin Bushby
Kongsberg Maritime

naglists · ‎May 22, 2012

I can't say what's usual, but we have three servers.

Dev
Prod1
Prod2

This allows us to migrate libraries from version to version without minimal
impact to publication schedule and without cramming all our libraries
through a monolithic upgrade window. In a specific example, we would have
some libraries publishing in 5.3 m110 via Prod1, other libraries would have
upgraded and migrated already to Prod2 running 5.4 m090, and we'd be
testing libraries against 6.0 m010, on Dev. As soon as our last library
migrated off of Prod1/5.3m110, we'd deploy 6.0 to Prod1 and start the
migration process "back" to Prod1 from Prod2 as we deploy any upgrade
induced stylesheet changes (discovered and corrected against Dev) and as
convenient for each library's publication cycles.

On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 8:03 AM, Martin Paul Bushby <
martin.paul.bushby@kongsberg.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm curious as to the general practice regarding the Publishing Engine.
>
> Is it recommended to have two: one for production and one for testing new
> PTC software releases and new applications?
>
> Or is it usual to expect a production stop during upgrade and testing?
>
> -- Martin
>
>
> Martin Bushby
> Kongsberg Maritime
>
>

ClayHelberg · ‎May 22, 2012

Hi Martin--

Yes, we usually recommend a multi-stage setup something like Paul
describes. We usually think of them as:

1) Dev

2) Test

3) Production

Dev would be for active development of new code/stylesheets and for
smoke-testing existing code against new PE releases. Test would be for
validation of code for correct results prior to deployment. Production
is for actual publishing of real documents.

Ultimately, it depends on the specific application. If you have a small
workgroup, and have control over your publishing schedule (i.e. you can
schedule PE down-time so that it won't impact the business), then it
might not be worth the investment in PE extra license. However, in many
production situations, the cost involved in being offline for even a
short time are more than enough to offset the investment in a dev and/or
test environment. A staged approach also minimizes the chances of a bug
affecting content that you actually deliver to customers, since those
bugs are likely to be caught at the dev or test stages. In addition, if
you come across an issue that takes longer than expected to resolve,
it's nice to be working that out on a dev or test server rather than
having the production server offline while you frantically try to track
down the source of the problem.

--Clay

Clay Helberg

Senior Consultant

TerraXML

GarethOakes · ‎May 22, 2012

Hi there,

Not much else I can add to the excellent responses below. I thought I would share another example as an anecdote from one of our customers - may prove useful in shaping your thoughts.

DEV - standalone testbed (like a "lab" environment) where developers can muck around to their heart's content.

STAG - staging environment, mirrors the production environment as closely as possible. Once a new build is put forward for release to production it is loaded to the STAG environment first. Testing occurs at this stage and the fully customised system (PE + Java + ACL + stylesheets) may be rebuilt from source more than once (with extra fixes/patches) in order to pass testing. Testing includes not only regression testing but also testing of new features or fixes (testing is a whole big topic of discussion in itself).

PROD - production environment. For reliability/availability/disaster recovery purposes PROD consists of two identical (beefy) servers in physically separate locations with a load balancer in front. If one location goes down then the other is automatically used. No changes are ever made to PROD unless they have been through testing in STAG first.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Gareth

mbushby · ‎May 23, 2012

Thanks guys, very useful.

Up to now we have managed with just one PE, with the occasional "frantic" efforts that Clay
describes. Now that we have an ever-increasing number of users, I guess we should go for a Test +
Production setup.

How does that normally work regarding licenses? Production PE = full license, Test = 2nd license
at reduced cost?

All advice gratefully received 🙂

Martin

GarethOakes · ‎May 23, 2012

Hi Martin,

PTC has available a backup/test license for Arbortext PE which lists at a significant discount over the full license. Of course the backup/test license comes with a number of restrictions, but has been suitable for some of our customers. You would need to contact your sales representative to determine which licensing option would meet your specific needs.

One interesting fact we have discovered about PE licensing is that the CPU license is per-socket, not per-core. That means if you have for example a server with a single Xeon processor with six cores you can theoretically run six different PE subprocesses in parallel using one PE license. If you then upgraded that machine to a dual Xeon setup (giving 12 cores total) you would need to purchase an additional PE add-on CPU license (but then you can run up to 12 PE subprocesses :] ).

Cheers,
Gareth

ssauvage · ‎May 25, 2012

Hello.

Sorry to respond to an old post.
I use Ultra Edit. It is not very expansive, and allows to manage a specific syntax colouration.
Here is an example :

Regards,
Sébastien

Le 26/10/2011 18:40, Clay Helberg a écrit:Hi Mike (and anyone else who's interested)-- I posted a copy of my jEdit ACL tools on the adepters.org wiki. You can find the download link on the "Developer Utilities" page (

pzorrilla · ‎Apr 28, 2014

Hello Clay!!

I know it has been a while since you posted this in the PTC forum, however I was wondering if you still have the add-ons you developed for jEdit to support ACL implementation. I am pretty interested 😄

Thank you so much for your time and support.

Paulette

ClayHelberg · ‎Apr 28, 2014

Hi Paulette--

Yes, you can download the plugin from the Adepters.org archive at

pzorrilla · ‎Sep 23, 2014

Hello Clay!

What a shame, I'm afraid I just saw your response; thank you so much for send me those files to use jEdit as ACL code editor. I really appreciate so much your suport.

Paulette 🙂