Thank you for putting in the time and effort to learn Leo. My story with Leo mirrors Matt Wilkie's to some extent.
I have contributor access to Leo's GitHub, I think mostly because of the level of complaining I did and Edward just wanted to shut me up (just kidding). I have been a strong proponent of many improvements, but not as strong a contributor sadly. Leo is the best outlining editor available, period. Sadly it looks like that will always be the case and nothing else will get close, at least until Edward completely abandons the project and many years pass until somebody else creates something new. The node/tree structure and @<file> capabilities of Leo is powerful beyond normal human comprehension (I think Edward/Terry/Ville/Jacob only truly understand). The ability to generate files from a collection of tree nodes can be a huge boon to productivity. In it's own way it is also a burden because you're managing something more complex than a wall of text. Ctags/Gtags/Etags type source code tagging systems which provide code "overviews" simply are not the same, not matter how nicely they are presented (Eclipse/Visual Studio). They're nice for navigation but they don't give you the control to organize code to your will. I have always said that Leo's greatest strength for me is *inflicting* arbitrary levels of abstraction on *unsuspecting* programming languages. Part of my day job is to manage a custom job management system written in python which is driven entirely by JSON configuration files. You feed it a JSON file it does some work, pretty simple. Over the course of a month I can generate probably a hundred or more of these JSON files. Leo and active_path plugin gives me the ability to generate these files on demand and give me access to a detailed database of all the work I've done over the past 2 years! Obviously I had to create the tree structure for date/job/data group organization myself, but I can't imagine this being done any better through some automated/pre-structured organization system than how I did it myself. I also use Leo to manage Python code and Python projects. As language agnostic as Leo is let nobody be fooled, Python will always be Leo's true love and writing Python code within Leo opens up all of Leo's capabilities. Again, the active_path plugin can be used to quickly import whole projects. I've yet to find a tool that lets me quickly and efficiently dig into Python code as well as Leo can. Whether you use Quick-Find (my recommendation) or clone-find commands (Edward's recommendation) you'll be getting to where you want to get to as quickly as humanly possible. Only grep/ack/ag/pt can search code as faster, but without the structure. The most frustrating aspect of Leo for me is that I know there is great power lying hidden and dormant. Because Leo is pure python there is also a strong temptation to try to squeeze that power out of Leo. The truth is, Leo is huge, and no matter how well organized the code is (very well organized because it's written in Leo itself), it will always be just out of grasp for anyone other than fairly adept programmers and even most of them likely will not have the time to tame it fully. That said, I've written before that tools like vim and emacs suffer from the same problem. Edward said Leo is not for everyone or for every task (I don't use Leo for everything), this may be true but that simple statement glosses over the truth. Tree/Node text editor's *are* for everyone. Everyone should have the freedom to organize code/text to their will and rearrange and modify it as easily as possible. Bottom line, Leo is great, but making it work for you can be a long arduous journey. I think most people do not make it out of the city gates. On Tuesday, July 5, 2016 at 4:04:38 PM UTC-4, Matt Wilkie wrote: > > > On Tue, Jul 5, 2016 at 10:46 AM, Propadovic Nenad <[email protected] > <javascript:>> wrote: > >> ...*show* me why Leo is great. I really want to love it, honestly. I >> *tried* to find it extremely useful ten years ago, > > > This sentiment really strikes a chord with me. Thanks for taking the time > to share and ask. > > I am in a similar boat. I have at times used Leo extensively, enough to > the point I have team contributor access on GitHub in spite of my novice > programming skills. But, I've also dropped out, almost a year now. For the > second time I've stepped out of the stream and back again. *((Hello Usual > Suspects! Long time no talk)) * > > My falling out seems to have different cause than yours, on surface > anyway. I don't understand the cause well, or at all, but it revolves about > or happens in a milieu of confusion. I've never felt completely comfortable > in Leo. There's so much I don't understand, or feel I don't understand, and > I'm nervous about shooting myself in the foot. > > The daily user experience and key interaction is just different enough > from prior tools, say Notepad++, that I'm a bit off balance all the time. > For programming activities PyScripter is just swifter and smoother, for me. > Partly it's the integrated interpreter; and running the code to line X and > then interactive exploring the variables and values at run time is great. > The ipython bridge kind of filled the same need, but fell apart for me. > > I look at the bones and architecture of Leo, see wonderful possibilities, > listen to the words of Edward, Terry, Kent, Jacob... and I'm inspired and > enthused. Then I pick up the golden chalice, and in my hands it turns dull > and leaden. :-/ > > Sorry, not a very helpful response. I just wanted to let you know you're > not alone in yearning. :) > > Matt > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
