The Atom page says: “Atom and all repositories under Atom will be archived on December 15, 2022″. The “hackable text editor for the 21st Century”, developed by GitHub — “[…] had not had significant feature development for the past several years” and that GitHub has therefore “[…] decided to retire Atom” in favor for “Microsoft Visual Studio Code”. What a disappointment for an Atom lover like me. So — what now?

That “Microsoft had bought GitHub” in 2018 might have facilitated that reasonable decision: A sponsor should not split his forces between two identical products — even if I, as a result, find myself again riding a dead horse. Thus, I have to change onto a living horse like Visual Studio Code, often recommended by my colleagues. But it should allow me to do, what I could do with Atom during the last years.

1. What’s wrong with the Editor Visual Studio Code

People say “Microsoft Visual Studio Code” is open-source software. But we have to consider the situation thoroughly:

• Yes, the copyright owners distribute the core of ‘Visual Studio Code’ — called Code — OSS — under the terms of the MIT license.
• And, eventually, MS does with Code — OSS, what anyone else may do. It takes the core, enriches it, and embeds it into its own product biotope. “VS Code is a Microsoft licensed distribution of ‘Code – OSS’ that includes Microsoft proprietary assets and features like Visual Studio Marketplace integration and telemetry system that are not available in Code-OSS”. Accordingly, “VS Code” is distributed under the terms of specific Microsoft License.
• Even if you can stop the telemetry data from being sent, actually there is another stone of contention. We extend the functionality of VSCode by — surprise — extensions from the Visual Studio Marketplace. But these extensions are — as the Microsoft Visual Studio Marketplace Terms of Use say — “[…] intended for use only with In-Scope Products and Services” (§1.b) where the term In-Scope Products is defined as “products and services […] offered by us [Microsoft] and GitHub […]” (§0/Opening).

So, although ‘VSCode’ is open source software and MS does with the Code-OSS what it may do, MS restricts the use of the extensions. We may not use/install MS extensions provided by MS in any other Code-OSS program provided by any other distributor, even if these extensions themselves mostly are free software.

This may be legally okay, but it smells a little. Thus, I looked for an alternative. Here are the results of my efforts:

2. What’s wrong with the Editor VSCcodium

VSCodium is intended to be the “Free/Libre Open Source Software Binaries of VS Code”: It wants to solve the license issues of VSCode and delivers “binaries […] licensed under the MIT license (with disabled) Telemetry […]”. Consequently, using VSCodium legally excludes the installation of extensions, offered by the Visual Studio Marketplace, even if it is technically possible

To alleviate this problem, we can use another free Marketplace for “Extensions for VS Code Compatible Editors”: OPEN VSX. But there is still an open issue: “Since (Open VSX) is a rather new project, you will likely miss some extensions you know from the VS Code Marketplace”.

Thus, we need joy in figuring things out. We must stay open to alternatives if our VSCodium shall run in the same manner as our Atom did.

3. What Could My Atom Instance Do?

My Atom instance offered me

• [x] text editing with vim commands
• [x] syntax highlighting for
• [x] markdown files with GitHub flavor
• [x] LaTeX files
• [x] LilyPond files
• [x] Javascript, CSS, HTML
• [x] a markdown preview
• [x] a conversion of GitHub flavored markdown files to PDF
• [x] a spell checker even for multilingual documents
• [x] indentation with blanks instead of tabs

Atom had many more options, of course. But I only needed these over a long period.

4. VSCodium as Replacement for Atom

4.1 Installing VSCodium in Ubuntu 22.04

The following section follows an article from linuxcapable.com:

1. Update your installation by sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
2. Install a required layer by sudo apt install apt-transport-https gnupg2 -y
3. Integrate the VSCodium key into your keyring by wget -O- https://gitlab.com/paulcarroty/vscodium-deb-rpm-repo/raw/master/pub.gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/vscodium.gpg
4. Integrate the VSCodium repository in your environment by echo deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/vscodium.gpg] https://download.vscodium.com/debs vscodium main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vscodium.list
5. Let the list of sources be updated by sudo apt update
6. Install VSCodium by sudo apt install codium -y

4.2 Customizing VSCodium

One thing in advance: By default, VSCodium uses the OPEN VSX Marketplace. Hence, you can install, what you want without violating the Microsoft Rules

4.2.1 Configure VSCodium

Before installing extensions, configure the existing options by calling File/Preferences/Settings and inserting the following values

1. Text-Editor: Tab Size => 2 (no waste of space)
2. Text-Editor: Insert Spaces => true (The same structure image on different editors)
3. Text-Editor: Word Wrap => on (no manually inserted line breaks in paragraphs)
4. Text-Editor: Bracket Pair Colorization => true (don’t get lost in your code)
5. Text-Editor: Code Lense => true (permit context information)

Then call File/Preferences/Extensions, search in the Marketplace for the following extensions, and press install:

4.2.2 A VIM Mode

The Open VSX Marketplace offers some VIM extensions. Personally, I felt a great difference between the original behavior and that of those who claimed to emulate it: some of them limit themselves to Syntax Highlighting, while others do not implement the : commands. In the meantime, I ended up with NeoVim once. But the handling of the cursor drove me crazy. Thus, I switched back to the standard extension vscodevim.

4.2.3 Get Your Markdown Environment

• Open File/Preferences/Extensions in VSCodium, insert Markdown in the search field and install
• Markdown All in One (yzhang)
• Markdown Checkbox (PKief)
• Markdown Converter (manuth)

You reach the preview via

• selecting the window symbol in the upper right corner for getting the preview or
• opening View/Command Palette and insert >Markdown preview

For converting the md-document to PDF, open View/Command Palette and insert >Markdown convert

At your first conversion order, the tool asks you to permit the download of a Chromium instance into the extension directory. If that does not fit the policy of your machine, you can configure the Chromium Path in Settings/Extensions/MarkdownConverter-Options

4.2.4 Get Your LaTeX Environment

VSCodium has a built-in syntax highlighting for LaTeX. (There is still an extension LaTeX language support, but that’s relevant only for elder VSCodium versions)

For converting LaTeX Files into PDF (etc.), I use the means and tools on the Ubuntu level.

4.2.5 Get Your Lilypond Environment

• Open File/Preferences/Extensions in VSCodium, insert LilyPond and install LilyPond Syntax (jeandeaual)

4.2.6 Get Your Web-Developer Environment

• VSCodium has built-in syntax highlighting for HTML, Javascript, and CSS.

4.2.7 A good Spell-Checker Environment for LaTex, Markdown, etc.

• Open File/Preferences/Extensions in VSCodium, insert LTeX and install LTeX LanguageTool … (valentjn) [Note: LTeX is not a typo!]
• Open File/Preferences/Settings/Extensions/LTeX in VSCodium and set LTeX:Language => de-DE or whatever your preferred language is.
• If you are going to write a document in another language, open it with a respective magic comment
• in LaTeX: % LTeX:Language=en-US
• in Markdown: <!-- LTeX:Language=en-US -->
• If you want to add a piece of foreign text to your document, insert the respective magic comment above this text and the respective resetting comment a line after it.

4.2.8 Some Other Helpful Extensions

• Auto Close Tag (formulahendry) (Automatically add HTML/XML close tag,)
• Auto Rename Tag (formulahendry) (Automatically rename paired HTML/XML tag)
• Better Comments (aaron-bond) (Colorize and rank your comments: Important, TODO, …)
• CodeSnap (adpyke) (Take beautiful screenshots of your code via expanded context menu )
• File Utils (sleistner) (Rename, move, … files via expanded context menu)
• Prettier (esbenp) (Let your documents consistently be formatted)
• Scheme (jeandeaual) (Deal with ‘Scheme’ documents used in Lilyoond)
• TODO Highlight (wayou) (Let the TODOs in a document be highlighted)
• vscode-pdf (tomoki1207) (View PDFs inside of VSCodium)
• YAML (redhat) (Deal with YAML files)
• YAML & JSON (hilleer) (convert YAMl 2 JSON and vice versa)

And in what way is this …

… part of the overarching topic FOSS ? Well, my professional life is dominated by free software and open source compliance. But sometimes I find more offbeat tools that are still worth sharing — at least with my forgetful future ‘me’. To whom I like to recommend — for example — suitable, advanced editors. Or ancient preparatory work. Or some free music editors for compositoy work. But with some posts, I just want to remind my later ‘me’ of attitudes, points of view, and attitudes. So that I don’t fall behind myself. That’s what it’s about in here too.

The post About Dead Horses: Atom vs. VSCod[e|ium] appeared first on FODINA 4 FOSS.

First, let’s specify what Atom has to offer in order to please us:

• Spell checker for German-English texts …
• with simultaneous syntax highlighting …
• and code completion for Latex, Markdown, HTML PHP, C / C ++, Java, bash.
• Seamless integration into a mobile laptop work environment.
• Good markdown support.

Then let’s install and configure this editor:

The standard Ubuntu method doesn’t work straight ahead!

At least since version 20.04, the new snap package format becomes a standard that you can hardly avoid. Many programs — including ‘Atom’ — are no longer offered as Debian packages, but have to be installed via the Ubuntu software center as snap packages. Sometimes, that works — but sometimes it doesn’t:

My first installation ran into a trap. After a few days, I did not find it any longer. Neither snap list atom nor snap list --all mentioned ‘Atom’ although I could still call the editor. This unwished modification cuts off the package from all automatic updates. My solution was ‘simple’: I successfully reinstalled ‘Atom’ via the Ubuntu Software Center. Then, the editor could be found again, could be removed without leaving any residue using snap remove atom (and could be reinstalled)

But — as described on the internet — the version offered by the Ubuntu Software Center behaved ugly: with every call it unavoidably opened two completely useless documents. So I had to rule out this variant: If I wanted to be further annoyed, I could have stayed with Eclipse.

The .deb detour also fails.

The official Atom documentation describes two ways to install ‘Atom’. The easier way is to download the .deb package and install it with sudo dpkg -i atom-amd64.deb. Unfortunately, that method fails because of unresolved dependencies.

But at least a complex methods works …

According to the second method, described by the Atom documentation, you have to download the key, to expand the apt sources and to update the system before you can install the package:

1. wget -qO - https://packagecloud.io/AtomEditor/atom/gpgkey | sudo apt-key add -
2. sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packagecloud.io/AtomEditor/atom/any/ any main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/atom.list'
3. sudo apt-get update
4. sudo apt-get install atom

By this method you successfully get an editor integrated into the Ubuntu GNOME 3 desktop.

… which still requires some additional packages …

Officially, you can expand Atom by packages. The respective interface can be accessed via Edit / Preferences / Install (Linux) or via File / Settings / Install (Windows): In the upper text field one inserts the name of the desired package. Then, the system searches for the appropriate ‘index card’, which offers an install-button.

But occasionally, the integrated search does not work. Every call ends with the error i.filter is not a function [object Object]. It’s not Ubuntu itself that evokes this error, but — as the community assumes — the Atom server.

In such cases, you reach your goal in a roundabout way: you search for the respective package via Google. Mostly, you will be offered a hit pointing to https://atom.io/packages/. The readme-file of the respective package often also describes how you can install it manually. Usually, you only have to type inapm install $packagename at your console. This command installs the package under .atom/packages.

By this method we can get the extra packages we need:

• First, we want to use ‘Atom’ as a LaTeX editor. To do this, we have to teach it the LaTeX syntax: apm install language-latex
• Second, we may want to use ‘Atom’ as a LaTeX IDE, so we have to make the LaTeX build commands accessible to it apm install latex
• Additionally, ‘Atom’ should check our spelling, in German and English texts. We will configure the multilingualism later. But then, ‘Atom’ shall not show us every LaTeX command as an error. But simultaneously, it’s supposed to verify our (LaTeX) code. Hence, we have to teach him that language via linter and its respective sub-modules: apm install linter linter-spell linter-ui-default linter-spell-latex. For the other languages, there is a corresponding command, e.g. apt install linter-
• After all, we also want to use ‘Atom’ while we are working on a sunny terrace. The dark mode makes this extremely difficult. Fortunately, there is a package with which you can quickly switch between light and dark: apm install dark-mode. As usual, you find the respective toggle command under Packages/dark mode.
• Fortunately, we hardly need to do anything for our Markdown activities: Syntax highlighting runs out-of-the-box. And by using the entry Packages/Markdown Preview we can directly view the HTML equivalent. But to convert a file into the PDF format without switching to the shell, we still need a package: apm install markdown-pdf. After having restarted Atom, we can configure the package under File/Settings/Packages#markdown-pdf and can call the conversion by Packages/Markdown To PDF.

… and some adjustments to the configuration:

‘Atom’ can be configured in two ways: By calling Edit/Preferences (Linux) or File/Settings/ (Windows) you open the configuration dialogues. In the sections #Core and #Editor you find the general properties you can set. But under Edit/Preferences/#Packages (Linux) or File/Settings/#Packages (Windows) you get access to the installed packages and their specific configuration options.

We need both methods:

• First, our ‘Atom’ should apply a soft line wrap, i.e. automatically wrap long text lines without inserting LFs (Linux) or CRs/LFs (Windows) into the text line itself. To activate such a behavior, we set a respective hook under …/Preferences#Editor.
• Additionally, we also specify that the virtual break should not be at the edge of the window, but at the maximum line width by activating Soft Wrap At Preferred Line Length.
• Furthermore, our ‘atom’ should be able to check the spelling in mixed-language texts. For activating such a capacity, we have to configure the package…/Preferences/Package/spell-check accordingly:
  • We activate Use Locales with a tick.
  • We insert en-US, de_DE in the field Locales.

So, we got what we wanted to get:

‘Atom’ specifies itself as a hackable text editor. The network knows its best extensions. Such reviews can inspire us. The methods to install them are those with which we achieved our goals:

A last confession

Completely replacing Eclipse is impossible and unnecessary. Because no other system supports the development of domain-specific languages in a better way. It’s a blessing to have XText and XTend.

And in what way is this …

… part of the overarching topic FOSS ? Well, my professional life is dominated by free software and open source compliance. But sometimes I find more offbeat tools that are still worth sharing — at least with my forgetful future ‘me’. To whom I like to recommend — for example — suitable, advanced editors. Or ancient preparatory work. Or some free music editors for compositoy work. But with some posts, I just want to remind my later ‘me’ of attitudes, points of view, and attitudes. So that I don’t fall behind myself. That’s what it’s about in here too.

The post Atom on Ubuntu 20.04 appeared first on FODINA 4 FOSS.