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UltraEdit 11 - Best text editor?

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dispossessed:
Hi, I was reading through some of the interesting reviews here and felt compelled to put in some good words about my favorite editor: SciTe.

First, it does support column mode, just hold alt. Also, if I understand correctly, 'user tools' means things like interpreters and compilers whose output is captured within the editor - this is very much there in SciTe, under the Tools menu (compile/build/go options).

SciTe is definitely geared towards coders, but I think it's the most functional and elegant editor available. It's extremely customisable, but everything is controlled by editing text files. In fact overall it's very keyboard centric, which is partially because it's cross-platform, so it doesn't really gel very well with the mouse-oriented interfaces found in most excellent Windows apps. That's a downside. But other than hex mode and spell check, I'm pretty sure it has all the features you mention about UltraEdit.

mouser:
SciTe is an excellent editor, as you say most definitely focused on editing source code for programmers - that's really why it didn't get much attention in our review.  One of the best things about it is that its not just open source, but well supported on multiple platforms.  It's part of a project that includes a text editor component that can be used in building other tools (SCIntilla).  Definitely a fantastic project.

[thanks for the heads up about column mode, i'm updating the review to reflect that information now].

dispossessed:
Thanks for the update, but I think the 'user tools' still needs to be corrected. Also, as of version 1.6, SciTe can be scripted using Lua (http://scintilla.sourceforge.net/SciTE.html).

Jussi Jumppanen:
answering my own question, you can select the DEFAULT selection mode (column or line), and then use ctrl key to toggle.  column mode doesn't seem to be able to insert, but still its not a bad solution.
-mouser (April 25, 2005, 12:40 PM)
--- End quote ---

Zeus does indeed have support for column mode cut and copy and it will quite happily do column mode inserting. In fact Zeus has column, block and line modes of cut/copy/insert.

For example assuming either the Brief or BriefEx keyboard mapping are set as the active keymap then Alt+C keys will select column marking mode. Similarly the Alt+M and Alt+L keys will select block and line marking mode.

But when it comes to cutting/copying and pasting of text I don't think there is anything that Zeus can not do.

Depending on mode in which the text is selected determines the mode that gets saved into the clipboard. So for example if you cut/copy in column mode text then any paste into Zeus will also be in column mode. Naturally, if you then copy the text as line mode then it will get pasted back into the document as lines of text etc.

The exception to this rule is if overwrite mode is active. In this case Zeus assumes no text is to be inserted, but rather the existing text should be overwritten.

Now these are the settings for the Brief and BriefEx keymaps but since the Zeus keyboard mappings are fully configurable, it is possible to re-map these or any other keyboard functions to any key combination.

As you have noticed Zeus also has a mouse marking mode. The default mouse marking mode is set to column mode but this can be easily changed to line or block mode using the Options Editor Options. Also mouse marking mode can be temporarily over-ridden by first pressing and holding the Alt or Control keys, while mouse marking.

But irrespective of whether mouse or keyboard is used to copy the text the same rules apply.

Finally, it is true that Zeus does not have any menus defined for these keyboard functions, but since Zeus has over 500 keyboard functions it is not possible to map all keyboard functions to a menu item.

Jussi Jumppanen:
Can you figure out a way to get it to wrap on window boundry automatically without inserting CRs into source code?  if so i'd love to know.
--- End quote ---

Zeus does not have a "soft CR/LF" mode as you describe above. When Zeus wraps a line in inserts a physical "hard CR/LF" character, hence using the left edge of the window as a line wrap point is not really possible :(

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