> You're telling me that you've never shouldered an old handset? Inconceivable!

Sure I've done it, including, as I mentioned,
with a towel as
an aid, but still I don't get good use of
both hands for typing. E.g., today I paid
two bills on-line. I used my computer for the
URLs, UIDs, PWs, of the Web sites, which
didn't work. Then I used a voice phone call
finding and
dialing the number from my main PC via my
text editor. Then I used the telephone voice
response and telephone touch tone pad to
do the work but had my paper based checkbook
right there, open, and used with a pen to
record my side of the transaction. I wouldn't
have wanted to have tried any of that
while traveling and/or with a mobile device.

Notepad++ sounds like a decent editor. So is
KEdit! Since I've got about 150 macros
for KEdit I wrote in their version of Rexx,
I won't change. But Notepad++ might
be help make some mobile computer that won't
run KEdit more useful.

Your idea of sync is not nearly the same as
mine. My view of sync is two files or two
hierarchical file systems where, roughly, want
to make them equal by keeping the latest
inputs
and also honoring appropriate deletes. Not so
easy to do well in general.

Your view of sync is much simpler and looks like
essentially just a file server that permits
at most one user at a time. Fine. That would
be very useful. And maybe there would be a
drive letter remote mount command so that
could access the file system on a public service
such as you mentioned.

But for that approach to sync, what I had in mind
was just leaving my main PC (likely with Windows
Server when I get that far) on all the time and
using it, in part, as a remote file server,
for my Windows XP, 7 system, Windows phone,
or iPhone if I have one and it can use
Windows Server as a file server. Then I
communicate between the mobile device and
my main server with Windows Server with
a VPN. Then since the server is locked
inside my house, maybe I will trust
in the Fourth Amendment and not encrypt
the files as they are on the server
but use the encryption in VPN for
security. Then I'll try not to have
any serious files on my mobile device.
Then losing the mobile device might not
be a huge security problem.

I'm sure Windows Server can provide the
functionality I'd need to use it
as a file server from some mobile devices over VPN.
Then with your definition of sync,
which has functionality fine with me,
the whole sync problem goes away simply
because I can't be in two places at once
and in one place would have no great reason
to be using two client devices connected
to the server at once!

That is, net, for files on a mobile device, I'd
just use VPN to connect to my main file
server which, for all purposes, has the
one and only copy of the file (except for
backups). That is, client devices, mobile,
even Windows XP or 7, just don't
have local copies of the files and, thus,
don't have files that need my complicated
version of sync.

I tried to indicate that I wanted to use
Windows Server as a file server in this
way. What I don't know is, what mobile
devices can use Windows Server and VPN
for all their file access? For security
in case I lose control of the mobile device,
I want all copies of all files
on the mobile device to be deleted, and
really deleted like overwritten and really
gone and out'a here.

I'm guessing that a lot of people are
going to be highly concerned about data
security for mobile devices, e.g., with
local police grabbing mobile devices,
the FBI/NSA snooping, mobile payments,
bitcoins, serious work with confidential
data done on a mobile device, etc. For
me for now, my solution to all those
problems is not to use a mobile device
(I do have one someone gave me,
but I don't use it!), and all like
right now within a millisecond as
I push this little button which
does not stop and ask me
"Do you really want to delete all
those files?".

My approach to an IDE seems to be unique:
To me, especially for the code I'm writing
for my business, the most important content
is not the executable statements but various
kinds of comments. When I return to some code
after a month, to heck with reading the darned
code, even though the code is typed with
beautiful indentation rules, long, mnemonic
identifier names, simple approaches to
classes, if-then-else, log file writing, and exceptional
condition handling, and, instead, just read
the comments. When I have questions,
sometimes the comments have cross references
typically with a 'target' such as

' Modified at 23:13:45 on Friday, July 19th, 2013.

which is in VB comment syntax and from a macro in
KEdit. But when there are not enough cross
references (e.g., where the heck is this
variable declared, set, used, changed?;
e.g., in this file of code, what are
all the functions/subroutines declared?),
I use the nicely functional locate
facilities of KEdit souped up with some
of my own macros.

Two of the biggies for my approach to
an IDE are:

(1) Screen Real Estate. I'd like a huge
screen or several huge screens but so far
am staying with the very nice NEC 17 inch
CRT I got when I plugged together my
Windows XP system. I will plug together
a Windows 7 system with a bigger screen, but
not today.

So, for more screen
real estate, when writing code typically I have
about a dozen windows open. And I have some
little programs of my own in ObjectRexx to
arrange the windows in nice ways.
Then I can bring any of the dozen windows
to the top of the Z order and use it without
moving any windows. So, I have close enough
to a dozen screens.

For

> keyword highlighting, bracket highlighting

KEdit has some of that functionality, but
I want nothing to do with it and keep it
turned off in KEdit! About all I let my
editor know that is "language specific"
is the comment syntax!

To me one of the great things in computing
is that source code is still essentially
just simple text in essentially just old
7 bit ASCII. Such text is really easy to
handle in many ways!

Net, I find that just making basic use of the
windowing system of Windows is a better way to
display information for my coding than the
panels in, say, Visual Studio.

(2) Documentation. My code has links
to lots of external documentation. Some of
this I wrote; some more are HTML of
articles from, say, Stack Overflow or some
Microsoft forum, but most of them are
from the 4000+ Web pages I have from
MSDN. So, each such Web page I have
described, abstracted, in a text file
I maintain with KEdit, and the abstracting
is usually good enough to let me find,
with a KEdit key word locate operation,
the right Web page when I need it.
Then in my code, I insert, say,

' SortedList Class
' H:/data05/projects/software/vb/msdn475.htm

where, of course, the tree name is on my file
system of a Web page from MSDN and the line above is the title
of the Web page. Then, right, one keystroke
in KEdit, using a macro I wrote, causes Firefox
to display the Web page. So, that's most of
my replacement of Microsoft's Intellisense,
and my version gives me the whole MSDN Web
page from which, of course, I can use the
subtree there to walk to related materials.

I have to type into something, and hopefully the
programs I type into can
be small in number and high in functionality.
So, KEdit is mostly what I type into.
For me, its macro language, based on Rexx,
is most of what makes it great. There's no
way I want to type into Visual Studio
instead of KEdit.

So far I don't want a mobile device. In time
as I do more traveling I may have to become
mobile, and then I will be highly concerned
about security, will want to keep essentially
all data on my main server in my home/office,
and access it via VPN. The sync problem
will go away because for each file,
there will be only one copy and that on
my file server (except for backups). Then,
right, for an editor for, say, light
work on a mobile device, I'd still hope
to use KEdit but otherwise would have
to try Notepad++, emacs, vi, etc.