PHP Editor for Linux

*I also posted this on the Linux Help Board, because I was unsure of which I was supposed to use. Sorry for any inconvinience*

I just migrated to Linux. So far, it's been a great experience, however I cant seem to find a free program that has everything I need in terms of coding PHP.

On Windows, I used Editplus - I had everything I need, however it's a windows only app.

What I am looking for in an editor is one that has syntax highlighting, the number by each line, and a built in ftp(So that I can save directly to the web).

If anyone can reccomend a program that has all of this, and is free, I would be very grateful

Try Bluefish


It worth mentioning, that since PHP programming is closely associated with Internet, and since majority of Net users [90%+] use the dreaded M$IE, browser outputs should be checked with browsers that the 'intended audience' use.

Because of that, I do my programming in windows and check the layout with Opera, Mozilla, Firefox and M$IE to make sure it is displayed correctly and uniformly.

In windows, I am very partial to UltraEdit [not free].

Good luck

I tried Bluefish. It doesnt have syntax highlighting, or the built in ftp. Thanks for the suggestion though.

I can not recall ftp, however AFA syntax highlighting, it does have it.

http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/screenshots/main_win.png

Good luck

vim


christo

you can use quanta.
it has syntax highlighting

I personally am quite partial to vim also. Both vi and emacs are valuable tools, regardless of the programming language at hand, and vim enjoys some popularity with the PHP crowd ( one very powerful editor for all situations ). Unix has several FTP programs "in the box" so not being integrated in the editor is not much of a drawback.

Coming from Editplus, I would probably recommend something like Bluefish (or maybe Quanta Plus for the KDE desktop), as above, and they certainly do have syntax highlighting.

There is a PHP plugin for the Eclipse platform which could prove to be interesting. I really like the Eclipse concept, but I haven't had a chance to play with it much yet. I've only used it for small Java and Perl projects, but it seems to provide an excellent environment for development. Xored is another IDE built apon the Eclipse platform and geared towards web development that utilizes it's debugging and compilation tools.

Anjuta is another free editor that the PHP ( and the C/C++ ) community seems quite fond of.

You have a great number of alternatives, because there are many more..


-Steven

I have installed Quanta. It seems to have everything that I am looking for. I havnt had the time to get to know it thoroughly yet though.

What is Vim like?

Moved to Development Software (posts of this nature belong neither in the PHP nor the Linux forum).

Zend Studio is my personal favorite - link in sig if you want to look into it. Runs on whatever OS you're using - linux, windows, mac, solaris, etc.

i had the same problem about a month ago. i used TextPad4 on my Windows machine, but since i moved to linux i've been using jEdit. it's plugin support will give you ftp support. it has syntax highlighting for a variety of lanuages, including php. it can auto-indent your code. it's a beatiful thing.

If you really like EditPlus, you could use it via Wine. I haven't tried all the stuff in it under Linux, but atleast the syntax highlighting, and basic stuff works.

I'll second (or, in this case, 'third') VIM. It's simply the best. If you're willing to learn a few complex keystrokes and regular expressions, you'll find it to be far more powerful than any GUI program you can find out there. You can add syntax hightlighting pretty easily for extensions beggining with .php, or whatever extension you want to add.

Er, I found this thread in a Google search, and reading through it all I decided to register to toss in my words. I don't know how old this thread is, but it if's less than a year and a half old, what I say is still true.

Bluefish does have general syntax highlighting (for as long as I could remember), and it also has PHP syntax highlighting. The Latter wasn't built-in originally IIRC... but you could download a little file to add to the repository of syntax-highlighting methods. Anyway, Bluefish has come a long way since then. And it sure as hell is a lot less bloated than Quanta. Quanta is still a great lazyman's tool if you have the resources to spare, but I don't agree in principle with their dev apps being so... unecessarily robust.

As for the ftp, that's not a big issue. I usually FTP all of my stuff using ncftp or FileZilla; however, when I'm in the developing stages I simply edit my files in ~/public_html/ so I can see the changes easily without having to upload anything (this of course being if you're running the appropriate daemons (web server with the php module). I think that's the major advantage of developing in Linux. Most of that stuff comes native with a distro (though it may require a little tweaking). It's a lot easier than setting up apache, php, and mysql on a windows machine, imho.

Another solution/alternative to vim is emacs. Purists will laugh at you for using emacs, but it sure as hell is easier than using vim (though you should learn vim anyhow). The best part about emacs, really, is that it's pretty much an operating system within an operating system (kind of a running nerd joke about it, but it's definitely true). It's a _very_ flexible editor with sytax highlighting. You just have ot learn a few command keystrokes and you pretty much have the editor down. I did most of my college course Java and C coding in emacs (mainly because we had to develop in a *nix environment, and he perferred that we develop with emacs... so that's how I learned it). Another great thing about emacs is that it runs in X with a nice GUI menu... and it also runs in the console (with an optional ncurses type of equivalent top menu). So if you're stuck without X (say you're editing a file remotely on a *nix box with no vnc access), and want something with syntax highlighting... your options are pretty much limited to vim and emacs. So, yeah, it's handy to know those two utilities.

yawn

Yeah, I guess my post was a bit drawn out.