Textastic - Syntax Highlighting - FTP, SFTP, Dropbox - for iPad | Hacker News Reader

Textastic - Syntax Highlighting - FTP, SFTP, Dropbox - for iPad

textasticapp.com

It is a fairly awesome text editor, great syntax highlighting, great snippets and navigation features.

What makes it less than ideal for me is lack of Dropbox syncing: You can download and upload stuff alright, but you always have to explicitly do so. It does not download changes automatically and it does not push them automatically, either. Basically, it treats Dropbox like FTP. If it was not for that, I would use it every day.

Wow, it gets better... From the manual: "Textastic allows you to add your own custom syntax definitions and themes. You can add TextMate-compatible .tmbundle packages and .tmTheme files. You can also add custom file templates that appear in the file creation screen."

http://www.textasticapp.com/v4/manual/lessons/How_can_I_add_...

Obligatory question: does it have support for vi-like bindings? Also, what about wireless keyboards?

This. The day I can get vi bindings made for a touch screen with Dropbox syncing is the day I sell my laptop and buy an iPad.

First, this looks like a nicely done app.

Serious question though: Who is doing serious development work on their iPad? Is this for the PHP developer on the go who needs to make a quick edit to a file on their remote server while riding in a taxi, or are people expected to use this app to do real* work?

* This bears repeating: This is a serious question, and I'm not trying to sound dismissive or judgmental. If you do serious development work on your iPad, I'd love to hear more about your workflow.

I think more and more people are trying to treat the iPad like a real computer. This seems misguided to me because the existing development tools and systems are rooted in the keyboard and (optional) mouse. Since the touch screen interface on tablets is so different, we really should be working on developing alternative systems that make full use of multitouch capabilities.

What we need is a touch-based intuitive-ish interface that does everything vi bindings do.

Speaking for myself, I use it mainly for taking notes in Markdown format. I've done a bit of coding with it, but no more than snippets (usually because I wanted to think through a particular algorithm in detail). I could imagine using it to tweak a bit of existing code while I'm on the go too, but the onscreen keyboard is still too slow when you're writing new code. Don't get me wrong: Textastic is a great app and it's far and away the best text editing environment I've ever seen for the iPad; this is more of an issue with using a virtual keyboard.

IMHO ….

Disclaimer: I'm doing something similar http://worqshop.com. The difference is the angle. It's not just a text editor with file transfer (FTP, Dropbox, etc.). I'm doing an IDE for the iPad. With GitHub support (and soon, Heroku deployment).

At the moment, iPad is not very good as a development environment, since Apple doesn't allow you to compile / run code on the iPad directly. You need backend support (e.g. cloud) that allows you to edit / compile / run code on the iPad.

But an iPad with multi touch interface and a bluetooth keyboard opens up a lot of interesting possibilities as an IDE. For example, the multi touch interface allows you to choose colour graphically (see http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/Screen-Colors.png ). Rather than experimenting with different values of RGB, you can just tap it.

I'm still building Worqshop. Thus, I'm not using the iPad as a development tool. I still need Xcode and my Mac :) At the moment, I'm using Worqshop to edit some HTML/CSS on GitHub, building HTML5 apps with Worqshop + GitHub + StackMob….. And soon, with Heroku deployment support, I can write Ruby / Python apps on my iPad and deploy it to Heroku.

Footnote 1: I still think the bluetooth keyboard is necessary for fast typing. I can't type very fast with the on screen keyboard

Footnote 2: I still prefer to code using text rather than using graphical items (i.e http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_programming_language ). Simply because text is a very compact representation of the semantics of code. As an example, to represent the semantic of "if / then / else" you only need a few lines of code. But with visual programming language, you need a bunch of nodes with graphs, etc. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ktechlab_FlowCode.png )

I usually use my own git repos on my own servers. Is this possible with your product?

This is the best iOS app out there. I have been using it for almost a year and I can't imagine owning an iPad without it.

This may sound like an ad for the app, but I have nothing to do with Alex (the creator) or his company. This app is just that good.

The kicker is that Alex is actually working on his own git library for the app, so in the next month or so expect to be able to have native git capabilities right from your iPad. Cannot wait!

I think lack of VCS support is the one thing really holding me back. Editing code is mostly useless to me without an easy way to version it. Really interested to see how Git will be supported.

wow, it's almost like typing on a real computer.

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