SOLVED: Seeking a text editor that can compare 2 files and let you edit either of them on-screen with immediate comparison updates
Edit: Wow, I didn't need any of these; Meld via Nemo Compare does the trick in conjunction with the built-in text editor, Xed! Glad I came across this delightful plugin!
Kate. Zed. Basically anything with Git's diff doesn't seem to allow live edits to either file directly in the comparison itself; I have to open one of the files in another text editor and search for the discrepant lines manually. Is there anything that can rival VSCodium out there (which, yes, has no telemetry but still feels too resource-heavy relative to the Syncthing sync-conflicts for which I intermittently use it to manually resolve)?
The search has gotten so bad that it feels like a failure to have to download Notepad++ on Windows to try to run it through Bottles, in which I then had a graphical scaling error (had to restart with 200% DPI, but the mouse cursor is still tiny) and I couldn't open my own Linux user directory in its file browser.
I'm pulling my hair out; I had no idea that this would be such a ridiculously difficult search. I'm trying NeoVim next, with possibly LazyVim, but I fear the same outcome...
8 replies
If you're comfortable with vim,
vimdiffis lightweight, works well for simple stuff, and you probably have it installed already (can usevim -dif not)I absolutely could not wrap my head around even gvim, but thanks for the idea; I know it's well regarded, but my skull is too thick. The Nemo Compare plugin apparently works flawlessly!
Meld
That's right, I forgot about this one. I read about it, but hadn't gotten around to trying it for some reason and then forgot. I'll take a look.
Edit: Thanks again; I found out that Nemo has a Compare plugin sporting Meld right in Mint's Software Manager!! This is the best one I've seen!
Vimdiff (vim) can do that
Meld is pretty good standalone, but I don't use it often due to:
I work in the dot net ecosystem, and VSCode is a tool I have to use. It's relatively lightweight, and the comparison/editing things when in a git repo is just what I want.
Can Magit not do this in Emacs?
https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/introduction-magit-emacs-mode-git
https://magit.vc/screenshots/
Bottles run in flatpak need permission to full file system basically that it, try something like port
https://github.com/dail8859/NotepadNext
I don't know why it still not popular