For the folks that are starting with this great framework I've seen several questions regarding this in the Google groups page, what is the "best" way of coding web apps in web2py?
First, web2py already makes it easy for you as far as the separation of your HTML code, your modules and your controllers, it is all nifty placed in their own directories of your web2py installation. Please note that I only cover editors that work with Linux, OS X has its own set of editors that I am sure are superb, and for windows, well, I frankly don't care about it (I *do* have my reasons for the previous rant, I'll explain them in another post).
GEdit - If using GNOME, you can get away by using it to edit your HTML and python scripts, make sure that you:
- Enable line numbers
- Follow the guidelines of Python's PEP-8 and use 4 spaces for your tab clicks and change your settings to use spaces instead of tabs in your code (extremely important), in fact this will also be okay for editing and indenting your HTML files. (You do indent your HTML code, right?)
For the most part you'll be fine. GEdit out-of-the-box contains syntax highlighting, smart indenting, and other features of a good text editor.
Komodo Edit - ActiveState Komodo Edit is the free version of the Komodo IDE suite, Komodo Edit is an impressive source code editor that supports a myriad of options, needless to say it includes everything GEdit does and then some, it is based in Mozilla's Gecko engine, it was itself written (at least partly) in Python and is the one that I am currently using to develop several of my applications.
Wing IDE - Wing IDE is the "eclipse" for the masses, this is, an easy to use, but incredible powerful IDE which provides not only source code editing capabilities but debugging, breakpoints, integrated shell and everything you come to expect from a professional IDE. Wing IDE is not free by any means, but they provide you with a "free" license if you prove to them that you will be using it to develop open source applications. Here is a screenshot from it in action while debugging pyforum.org locally in my PC (click on the image for a larger version):
Conclusion
This is just an incredible small subset of all source code editors available, however they are the ones I've used to develop several applications (including pyForum.org, zForum.org, aiastudios.com) and they are proven to be excellent for RAD development.
