Text editors and integrated development environments¶

Main questions:

What type of text editors or integrated development environment (IDE) can I use to create courses for the A+ platform?

Topics:

In this section, we will provide you with a list of text editors and IDEs for editing RST documents:

Text editors and IDEs

Material:

In this chapter, you won't need any additional material.

Requirements:

You should have a basic understanding on text editors and IDEs.

Estimated working time:

We suggest you to access every link presented and skim through the the documentation of each text editor and IDE. Therefore, it may take you a couple of hours to read the content of this chapter.

Text editors and IDEs¶

The course content, as mentioned in previous chapters, consist of several RST files. Therefore, you are going to need a versatile and powerful text editor. We suggest using text editors with advanced functionalities, such as Vim, or Emacs. Nevertheless, we advocate the use of IDEs over any text editors, especially VS Code and the A+ Tools extension.

In any case, we will provide you with a list of some of text editors and IDEs that are well know for being used to write RST documents. You can access each link and read more about each of these tools and choose the one that best suits your needs.

For GNU/Linux environment, some simple text editors are:

Kate
Mousepad included in the Xfce Desktop Environment
Gedit.
Vim
Emacs

For windows a simple text editor is:

Notepad++

Some more advanced and cross-platform editors are:

Atom
VS Code (Recommended by the A+ team)

Warning

Do not use word processors such as Microsoft Word or LibreOffice writer. Their formatting commands are basically useless when one must edit plain text files.
Some of the most advanced editors might have a steep learning curve, but once you have mastered the editor's features, your productivity will increase.
The Aplus tools extension in VS Code, provides a series of features that makes the creation of the courses painless.