Is anyone using eFTE?

[clayton256]

I used FTE for many years as a C programmer on OS/2, DOS and Linux. I'm using a mac, working on my business website and I've been searching for a code editor I like. I keep thinking about how much I liked FTE back then. I built macOS binaries from the makefile as the Xcode project crashes Xcode-beta and have been getting re-familiar with it. Is anyone using eFTE on a regular basis? Is there a place for it among nano, micro, VS, etc?

[lanurmi]

I hope someone is using it. I still use it occassionally myself. eFTE is convenient for certain kinds of tasks, especially for executing an arbitrary command with F9, browsing its output, and quickly opening files for editing.

Things that prevent me from using it more regularly include:

• No support for UTF-8 (nor any other kind of Unicode)
• The window is not dynamically resizeable on Win32
• There's something odd about drawing in X11 with recent Linux distributions
• It is not an IDE (which is also a good thing, not just bad)

I'd say there is place for eFTE, but it has its limitations that were not an issue in 2003, but have become an issue in the past 20 years.

You might remember the FTE PM version, i.e. the GUI version for OS/2. Ideally I'd like to have something similar implemented for both Windows and macOS. But as I do not have that much time, that remains just a dream.

[dmcbride]

I have, somewhat reluctantly, been forced from fte / efte (which I started using in about 1994), even making numerous fixes to FTE itself, to VSCode. VSCode isn't an IDE, either, but does pretend to be one, especially with some of its plugins.

I can't get fte/efte to work on my 4k monitor properly, so I've basically given up.

[clayton256]

@lanurmi I was part of the brief discussion 7 years ago about wxWindows being an option for a multi-platform GUI version. I believe the OS/2 PM icon was my contribution back in the '00s. I, like you, always wanted an OS/2 PM like version for Windows (and now wanting a Mac version). I might have a little extra time this winter to try to address some issues. If I do is a multi-platform GUI more useful or would UTF-8 support better? Maybe they're related issues though. As an former embedded systems guy, I don't have a lot of experience with X11, MFC or SwiftUI.

[lanurmi]

It would be great if you have time to work on eFTE!

In my opinion the lack of UTF-8 support limits eFTE's usefulness much more than not having a GUI. But supporting UTF-8 is not a trivial task, as it probably requires a lot of changes in a lot of source files, and I doubt different encodings have been considered at all while the original author(s) created FTE in the 90s.

On the other hand, different implementations for the same UI have existed since forever, which is why I suspect that creating a new GUI implementation would not be terribly hard, assuming one already is familiar with using some specific API for implementing a GUI.

Many many years ago I tried implementing some sort of a GUI version for macOS, using Cocoa API and Objective-C. I managed to create a text window, without functioning keyboard input, to which eFTE drew its content. And it wasn't terribly hard, but would have helped if I had actually known Cocoa.

[dinkc64]

Good day fellow fte users!

I'm a little late to the party here, but, I use fte every day since mid 90's.
There's something special here. I've used this editor from my late teens 'till I am like Stans grandpa from South Park. "kill me, billy!." - Stan's Grandpa

I found this port in 2017 when I felt like customizing some things, made a few simple changes to better suit me.
for example:
fte lives on c:, but when I go to another drive letter & try to run it from my path - it has trouble finding its config

today I had trouble opening a 1.9gig text file, and figured that it might be a good idea to update & try to compile a 64bits exe (instead of 32bits, as I last compiled) to see if that would help. That's how I ended up here!

*using winderps