Experience with Atom Editor

Tags atom
Posted by Logan

I have been a Vim user for a long time. However, I found that Vim is not good enough for me to write blog with Pelican. I need a good reStructuredText previewer, but I am not very satisfied with InstantRst. I wish to have a two-panel editor that I can edit the document and see the preview side-by-side.

Atom, an open-source editor developed by GitHub, comes into my mind.

Installation

$ wget https://atom.io/download/deb -O atom.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i atom.deb

Install Packages

$ apm install advanced-open-file git-plus highlight-selected \
              language-restructuredtext rst-preview-pandoc

Package descriptions:

  • advanced-open-file makes it easy to open or create files.
  • git-plus allows us to commit changes to Git repositories.
  • highlight-selected will highlight the double-clicked words.
  • language-restructuredtext enables the syntax highlight for reStructuredText.
  • rst-preview-pandoc provides preview panels for reStructuredText.

Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Open Files
    • Press Ctrl-T to open files with fuzzy finder.
    • Press Ctrl-Alt-O to open the advanced open file dialog.
  • Search
    • Press Ctrl-F3 to highlight the occurrence of word under the cursor.
    • Press Ctrl-F to search in the current buffer.
    • Press Ctrl-Shift-F to search in the project.
  • Edit
    • Press Ctrl-Alt-Q to re-flow or wrap the selected text.
    • Press Ctrl-[ to indent selected lines.
    • Press Ctrl-] to outdent selected lines.
  • Git Commands
    • Press Shift-Ctrl-A (and Right) to add current file (staging.)
    • Press Shift-Ctrl-X to commit staged changes.
    • Press Shift-Ctrl-H to show all commands supported by Git-Plus.
  • reStructuredText
    • Press Ctrl-Shift-E to open the preview panel for reStructuredText.