Are there any non-developer tools to edit gherkin files? [closed] - cucumber

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Gherkin syntax files are just plain text so any editor such as notepad can be used. However, one of the more important things we are using this for is to provide tables of sample data. Without good formatting options the files become hard to read.
There are some good tools (see: How to get Gherkin syntax highlighting for .feature files in Visual Studio?) for visual studio such as specflow.org or https://github.com/henritersteeg/cuke4vs. Another option for developers using eclipse is discussed at Cucumber IDE for feature writing with autocomplete? However I don't want to require it be installed for our business analysts.
Here is a syntax highlighter files (http://productive.me/develop/cucumbergherkin-syntax-highlighting-for-notepad/) that can be imported into notepad++ but it does nothing for table formatting.
Are there any other options that I might have missed for allowing non-developers to efficiently edit .feature gherkin files?

Here is a non-developer tool. We had a similar requirement and I wanted to have a stab at creating a Chrome extension. It's free and there are no ads. Above all it is cross-platform and requires no technical knowledge to install and run. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tidy-gherkin/nobemmencanophcnicjhfhnjiimegjeo
I know this is an old post, but I came across it when I was looking for a solution and I didn't think the answers fully addressed the OP's request for a non-dev tool (presumably aimed at a non-technical person).
It's a first attempt, so be kind! Hope someone finds it useful.

There seems to be a couple of projects in the works.
There's a beta of a Gherkin editor here: http://gherkineditor.codeplex.com/ (windows)
Cucumber's author has created a web-based gherkin editor (relies on javascript, Ace and Node.js). Perhaps a bit more complicated to set up, but it could be integrated into a CMS or other web-based system.
Neither really substitutes for a conversation with your business domain experts.

Notepad++ can highlight Gherkin syntax - see http://productive.me/develop/cucumbergherkin-syntax-highlighting-for-notepad

There is an updated eclipse plugin called xgherkins at github for eclipse users

If you are using JIRA you can try a plugin called Markin at https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.fulstech.jira-gherkin-custom-field/server/overview. It supports both Gherkin and Markdown at the same time, so it is very useful for non-developers.
Disclaimer: I am the creator of Markin.

After trying many google results, I found a solution for syntax highlighting in Eclipse.
Down load Xtest from http://www.eclipse.org/Xtext/download.html.

A good solution for this is to use the Behave plugin for JIRA.
In a good SCRUM team, your domain experts and business owners should define the backlog and describe what they want. It is awesome that you can then immediately add the Given/When/Then definitions for test scenario's.
JBehave also supports getting the .feature files from Google Docs. There is no syntax highlighting plugin for google docs though, so this only takes care of the synchronization problem.

I found http://www.bddeditor.com Seems fine for initial phase (they say "BDD Editor is work in progress".

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What application help system (like chm files) exist on Linux/GTK? [closed]

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On windows CHM is a very good option.
Is there anything other then delivering a static set of HTML pages and using a primitive call to a webbrowser (which is even a problem itself on linux). And it would not offer any kind of fulltext searching, separated bookmarks and even the simple fact of not opening a new tab for each help call.
The Gnome yelp program is what is used for GTK/Gnome applications. It supports a number of formats, but not CHM directly. They have started to define their own markup, named Mallard. But I don't know what is the status of that.
I'd still recommend static HTML as the best option (and of course man pages!). For example you can use Sphinx to write beautiful documentation with a full-text search support!
There are CHM viewers available on Linux though frankly as a Linux user I'd prefer to get static HTML pages.
Some examples are chmsee and kchmviewer.
Afaik there is no universal system. Depending on your desktop system (gnome/kde) there might be helpsystems, but they are usually based on loose files and use full-blown browsers. (usually webkit based)
For Lazarus a CHM based helpsystem and embedded browser was created, including CHM write support.
The reasons to avoid loose static html were mostly:
the 60000 lemma static documentation took too long to install on lighter systems or systems with specialist filesystems.
CHM removes slack and adds compression.
we also support non posix and OS X systems, and little filesystem related problems (charsets/encoding, separators, path depth etc) and case insenstive filesystems on *nix caused a lot of grief. The CHM based help solved that, allowing for one set of routines to access helpdata on all systems.
indexing and toc are Btree based, and can be easily merged runtime from independently produced help sets. In general integrating independently produced helpfiles is a underappreciated aspect of helpfiles in general, while key to open platforms.
native fulltext search.
An own viewer also has the ability to take advantage of extra features on top of the base system.
I'm not mentioning the Lazarus system in the hope you adapt it, since it is at the moment too much a development system (SDK) oriented system, the viewer is not even available as a separate package. I mainly mention it to illustrate the problems of loose html.
I haven't investigate KDE/Gnome/Eclipse what they use as helpsystem for a while though. If I would have to restart from scratch, that's where I would look first.
If I had to create something myself quickly, I would use zipped static html, and a single gziped file with metadata/indexes and the lightest browser (Konquerer?) I could find. Not ideal, not like Windows, but apparently the best Linux can offer.

Wish to learn a new programming language [closed]

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I wish to learn a new programming language but there are so many out there! So thought I'd ask here if there are any that correspond with what I wrote in this list that you might know of:
Making applications with GUI
That would preferably run on any system, preferably Windows (I run Windows 7)
That would not need a hardcore IDE and hopefully no compiling
That is not incredibly advanced (Hard syntax paired with OOP etc.)
That does not need any 'platform' or 'component' installed to work (can be opened with a click, say an .exe file or any other file type)
I already know:
HTML, JavaScript and PHP
Thanks in advance for your input.
I'd recommend Python to anyone.
You seem to have some mutually exclusive options here.
For example, no compiling and opening an .exe. An exe file is generated via compilation.
IMHO, Qt probably best suits your needs. It runs on just about everything, doesn't need an IDE (though qtcreator is a fantastic one, I suggest trying it before you choose not to use an IDE) and is easy to learn and well documented.
If you want compile-less then you'll need to use the python or other scripting language bindings too it.
I would suggest C-sharp / F-sharp combination with WPF thrown into that to get GUI's going...
It a pretty rough learning curve but the combinations are endless...
A couple things to certainly look into:
PRISM
M-V-VM ( Model , View, Viewmodel)
If you are interested in an other back-end persistancy try going into object databases, such a great new world opened up for me when I discovered all the things you can do with that... ( DB4O is my preferred one at this moment.. it has loads of info and a very active community )
It is only limited by your imagination ;)
This is one of those questions of having 10000 people going to an Ice cream shop and then choosing which flavour they want. So far I have worked with Delphi and C#, I am doing SQL, Asp.net and javascript, well, basically!
The answer should be somewhat simple. Go check out which programming language fits your needs, and is in great demand in the working world. If you want to program websites for companies, then PHP, ASP.NET and the older HTML is for you. As far as I know, flash is also coding.#
Another way to look at this question is not only the availability of the language you seek, but its future, if it will become obsolete or the coding language of the century.All coding is the same, but some are more rigorous in certain tasks (like C# and delphi are good languages to build forms applications to handle tasks for data manipulation, integration and whatnot.)
The answer to this question is to explore! What is Your flavour? Sitting in front of a desk doing CRUD operations and staring into a gui which has countless buttons and textb
oxes, but real in-depth code, or to start into a rich gui with XML based code?
I recommend HTML5+Javascript.
You can use Canvas or SVG for
graphic.
It works depending on the browser. So
any OS or system can use it.
Javascript and HTML can be edited in
any thing for example: notepad.
You can write your JS using OOP.
How to open a HTML file? just
double-click on it.
Have fun :)

Any alternatives to Eclipse? [closed]

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I'm a long-term Linux developer, and I've been using Eclipse to do all my coding for years. It's got decent syntax highlighting for a range of languages, good project management, top-notch integrated VCS support, and its Java support is superb.
Unfortunately it's also huge, rather clunky, and has a number of bad habits ranging from files disappearing irrevocably if you accidentally undo in the project view after creating a file, to mysterious lockups where it will sit and think at 100% CPU for a minute, to an extremely clumsy package manager that seems to become more and more fragile the more stuff you install with it. So I'm looking for suggestions to an alternative to Eclipse that I can try.
There are, however, some provisos.
There are two main styles of IDE. There's the Eclipse style, where a project is a directory; moving files in the project moves the files in the directory, so the project view can be treated as a file manager. And then there's the Visual Studio style, where the project is an abstract thing that does not necessarily match the layout on disk, and a project can contain files from multiple directories and moving files in the project doesn't touch the disk. This latter style I cannot stand, as it simply doesn't match the way I work. Unfortunately most Linux IDEs I've found work like Visual Studio. e.g. qtcreator, netbeans, monodevelop, etc.
I must be able to create a raw, unmanaged project, where the IDE doesn't try to build stuff, debug stuff, or touch the files in any way other than just editing them and managing them. This is because most of my stuff tends to get built from the command line. For example, Code::Blocks, which otherwise looks excellent, insists on all projects having a managed build system with build configurations etc, and won't take no for an answer, even if said build system is totally irrelevant to what I want to do. Integrated build systems are all very well but if I can't just point the IDE at a directory full of files and edit them, I'm afraid it's useless to me.
The languages I work in are C, C++, Java, Lua, shell script, Vala, and a myriad of other things, so something with decently robust syntax highlighting would be nice.
I realise that I'm being quite picky, but IDEs are a very personal thing, and, well, that's how I work. I don't dislike Eclipse enough to warrant changing my workflow, but I would like to know if there's something better out there that I can use with the same workflow...
I'm not really a very experienced programmer, I only have about 3 years of experience, but during those three years I have become completely disappointed with every IDE that I used.
I tried Visual Studio, Eclipse, NetBeans, IntelliJ IDEA (that was the most horrible of them, probably), Qt Creator (this one was the nicest, for Qt projects). All of them were too slow, clunky, too "intrusive", had a lot of features I didn't even need and using them was a real pain. So here is what I did.
I uninstalled all those IDE's, installed the good old gvim text editor, downloaded a nice color scheme for it, installed a good font for programmers (terminus), installed a few nice vim plugins, learned the VIM commands, learned how to use my tools (GNU make, g++, cvs, git etc.) and lived happily ever after.
The advantage of Vim is that it's lightweight, does not hog up your system's resources, does not tell you what to do, yet it is powerful enough to be one of the best text editors out there.
However, if you find Vim hard to grok, I suggest that you try Geany, a lightweight text editor for programmers. Also, I have recetly checked out Code::Blocks and it seems close enough to be good. It's not good for Java development, though, but for C++ it's decent. So, you know, pick your poison :)
How about JEdit?
I highly recommend Intellij Idea. As of about a year ago they've got a free Community Edition.
Since you are using Linux why not use xemacs (http://www.xemacs.org/)
To get an idea how to set it up for various languages you can look at this:
http://www.xemacs.org/Documentation/packages/html/prog-modes.html
Then for Java, you can look at http://jdee.sourceforge.net/
Emacs is very flexible, so you can get it to work as you desire, but, it will require more effort on your part that using a standard IDE, such as Eclipse.
When I don't want to wait for Eclipse to load I just use gedit - it's fast and has syntax highlighting.
You can open the sidebar to jump between open files or use the file browser and the bottom panel has a terminal to make in. If you use the External Tools Manager you can add custom scripts to be run by any shortcut key combination.

What's so great about TextMate? [closed]

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Almost every developer that uses a Mac practically worships TextMate. Why? What extraordinary features does it have that other text editors and IDEs don't? I did a quick search and the only really useful feature that I found that most other editors lack is the column selection option, but I wouldn't use a certain editor just for that. What makes TextMate so amazing?
TextMate was the first app I bought when I switched to the Mac a few years ago.
The features I like most are:
bundle support
clean UI
project support
shell integration
fast for small files (fast startup time)
HTMLTidy built in
CSS and XHTML validation integrated (needs online connection)
but it also has some drawbacks:
slow for big files
lack of updates (for some time now, but TextMate 2.0 seems to be alive)
The main selling point is the ability to extend the UI using bundles, which are basically just shell scripts. It is also fairly lightweight.
I think the appeal of TextMate is that its not bloated ... its has just the right mix of text editing / IDE features, implemented in just the right way :)
A lot of editors have column selections (although in a lot of them its buried deep down). The actual fact TextMate is liked is it's bundle system, which makes some repetitive programming tasks much easier. It's not considered a replacement for languages that have IDE-s with "intellisense" support (Java, C#, etc.), but it's really useful if you want to create programs in a scripting language like ruby or python.
TextMate is very powerful and at the same time usable, intuitive, elegant and lightweight.
On the other hand e.g. the two most popular Unix editors Emacs and Vi(m) are both very powerful but IMHO(!) their usability is not up to todays standards. (I use all three of them but think TextMate is by far the best.)
I've been trying to use TextMate as a replacement for Emacs. So far I'm not sold, though I like projects, simpler/cleaner UI, and the idea that it's extensible using python, etc. (I've never mastered elisp).
Things I don't like [in comparison to Emacs]:
no ability to swap point/mark or return to previous marks.
movement keys don't automatically take you out of inline search.
tags not so great (ex: no symbols can be found in java files without classes).
completion only searches current file.
NOT OPEN SOURCE.
Okay, I still want to give it a fair shot, but mostly I'm just missing Emacs' superior functionality and feeling increasingly forgiving of its challenging UI and more willing to try to learn elisp for real. Even for projects, using emacs desktop-save in a project folder can accomplish nearly the same thing.
-taranaki
Textmate basically has all the power of <insert your favorite unix editor here> with a nice Mac OS X UI wrapped around it and a great plugin system using bundles, of which hundreds are available and most are either good or awesome.
Community support.

How did you benefit from Resharper [closed]

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How much code kludge could you remove using the resharper 4?
I want to hear more about benefits on 10k+ codebases
Resharper is a tool. Continuous refactoring is an attitude. If you've got the attitude, then IMO resharper is the best tool you can get. The tool by itself does not really remove any kludge.
The size of the codebase only makes these tools more important. With reasonably large codebases you have to trust the tool. I use all og jetbrains' tools and think they're marvellous.
I still think continuous refactoring is best introduced into a project by getting one or more people who know all the tricks into your team(s).
And yes. I worked on a stuck project for 7 months doing only refactoring, using resharper. I basically refactored almost every single line of code. Maybe it should have been rewritten from scratch, but that was not an option. Be sure to introduce testing as you refactor.
It's freaking awesome. I'm currently working on releases for the large code base we're working on here and to merge a change across two branches is utterly awesome.
CTRL + T => Means I can find a type in no time at all. To go to SmartcardProductIssueService is just CTRL+T, SPIS, ENTER and the file is opened. SHIFT+ALT+L and it's selected in the SolutionExplorer, then I just right click to view the history and I can start working on the merge.
Refactoring is nice and the "greyed out" effect for unused code has helped me spot a few bugs.
If you want to see some of the refactoring joy check out the jedi refactoring vid.
Resharper offers so many benifits in terms of developer productivity. It also improves better design by suggesting many improvements to the code on the fly. i have been encouraging people in my team to use all the shortcuts from Resharper and try and get off the habit of using mouse. Its not to say that you shouldn't be using mouse at all. But Resharper offers so many rich features that as a developer you can almost forget to make use of mouse.
Here is a small blog post I wrote about how to make use of resharper to clean code
http://nileshgule.blogspot.com/2010/10/refactoring-clean-code-using-resharper.html(This does require few mouse clicks here and there :))
There are various addins for resharper like Stylecop, NUnit etc which help other tools integrate with resharper and offer better user (developer) experience.
Hope this helps.

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