Docs
- EDITOR
(...)
If the VISUAL environment variable is set, then it is used instead of EDITOR
and started as a graphical process. In other words, the VISUAL environment
variable will override this and thus have no effect if VISUAL is also set.
If both the VISUAL and EDITOR variables are not set, then a default editor
(Windows Notepad, Mac OS X Text Edit, Linux GEdit) is used.
(...)
I have the
VISUAL
envar defined in my .xessionrc
export VISUAL='emacsclient -c -a "emacs"'
EDITOR
envar I keep in .zshrc
:export EDITOR="emacsclient -nw"
Up to Houdini 20 the program respected VISUAL envar. The behavior changed in 20, or at least I believe so. I fire up Emacs only when writing long scripts, which perhaps is not too often, so I might be mistaken. Anyway, currently Houdini seems to be misbehaving in this regard, and if I attempt to open the code using "Expressions → Edit in External Editor", the program complains that:
Houdini
No external editor set, pick one?
It doesn't even open GEdit, which according to the docs is the default external editor choice if both the EDITOR and VISUAL envars are missing (I tried that by starting Houdini from console, which reads EDITOR from .zshrc, which doesn't include VISUAL).
It also doesn't work if I put the
VISUAL
envar directly into houdini.env, nor if I define it in "Edit → Aliases and Variables → Variables". I'm not sure what's going on, so please advise guys.