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Atom: Hackable Text Editor for Ubuntu

It all started when I wanted to convert some text to Title Case. Ubuntu's default text editor, gedit, is quite capable, but does not include case conversion. A quick trip to Google and I found  (gedit is number 4). Since I write some code, too, I'm always interested in a good text editor.

After going through the list, I picked #2, Atom.

Atom looks appealing for a number of reasons.
  1. It's available through the Ubuntu Software app (almost -- see below for details)
  2. It's built on web technologies.
  3. It's cross-platform.
From the article:
Atom is a free and open source text editor that’s developed by GitHub. Based on Electron (CoffeeScript, JS, Less, HTML), it’s a desktop application that’s built using web technologies ... The major features of Atom are cross-platform editing, built-in package manager, file system browser, multiple pane support, find and replace function, and smart autocompletion. You can select from 1000s of open source packages and add new features to Atom. It’s also customizable to suit your needs and style.

I tried to install Atom using the Ubuntu Software app. It required an Ubuntu One account. Not a problem, easy to set up. I couldn't get the installation to work, however:
Detailed errors from the package manager follow:
snapd returned status code 400: Bad Request
The resolution is easy, though: download from the web site: Atom

Install like so:

Debian and Ubuntu (deb/apt)

To install Atom on Debian, Ubuntu, or related systems:

# Install Atom
sudo dpkg -i atom-amd64.deb

# Install Atom's dependencies if they are missing
sudo apt-get -f install

Did I get what I wanted? Not right away. Out of the box, Atom converts to UPPER and lower case, but not Title Case. Easy enough to install a package that does what I want.

I'm going to use Atom as my main text editor and see how it goes, and I'll update this post with my impressions. But so far, I think it's a fantastic way to make a great text editor: build a hackable platform to encourage developers to extend the features, and then you simply install what you want to use.

Comments

Anonymous said…
try: sudo snap install --classic atom
9:21 AM, October 12, 2017
clod said…
Codelobster IDE works great on Ubuntu too.
11:58 PM, December 26, 2017
Neil said…
Thanks for the command line goodness! Always appreciated. Also, I looked at CodeLobster IDE, and it looks like a great IDE for web developers such as myself. It seems like it's focused on PHP development, but also supports HTML, XML, CSS, and JavaScript (among others). It's very early in the development cycle (alpha 0.1) so I'd recommend that you try it out on some non-critical work to get a sense of whether it will work for you.

Thanks for the tremendous tips!
7:50 PM, December 27, 2017
byodbuzz04 said…
A Plain Text Editor
Plain Text files
That's right, if you're writer on a budget, you don't need to spend any money buying expensive writing software or apps. Instead, you can use the text editor that comes free with your operating system.
Just open up Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on a Mac. I like plain text editors for writing something short quickly and easily, without thinking much about it. I wrote a blog post about the benefits of using plain text editors as writing software.
Use for: writing whatever, wherever
11:13 PM, December 16, 2018
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