After migrating to Linux, I found that I didn't miss the POV-Win IDE, except for
right-clicking and keyword auto-completion.  (I find that kwrite's auto-
completion gets in the way more that it helps.)

I am vaguely aware of unofficial Linux IDEs (or perhaps wishful thinking about
the existence of Linux IDEs), but I am not now moved to investigate such rumors.

Instead of simply right-clicking on embedded command-line arguments, I have to
highlight, drag, and drop to the terminal window, but recalling past render
configs is as easy as pressing the up-arrow.  I haven't figured out an easy
replacement for right-clicking on an #include file line.  Putting the POV system
directory in my .bashrc makes it slightly less inconvenient.

Surprisingly, I haven't missed the help system's keyword and index searches.
Perhaps it's because as my familiarity with POV-Ray increases, I have a better
sense of where to look in the documentation.  Or perhaps I just got spoiled by
POV-Win, and relied on the search capability more than I needed.  On the few
recent occasions where I didn't know where in the documentation to look, a grep
did the trick--and grep was one of the reasons I switched to Linux in the first
place!  (One can download Gnu tools to Windoze, but why bother holding down a
squealing pig to apply lipstick when you can have Linux instead?)

One bit of frustration is that kwrite treats .inc files as if they were PHP
files, with the result that half the file is highlighted as errors.  :-P  It
recently occurred to me to create a soft link with a .pov extension to trick
kwrite into using the desired syntax highlighting.  Problem solved, at the
expense of a more cluttered directory.

There's one case where, after a year of Linux, I can't seem to shake IDE
mentality.  Quite often, I make a change to a scene file, do a render, and stare
in frustration as the change makes absolutely no difference.  Then I remember:
there's no auto-save!

Post a reply to this message