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Return of the Son of the best *free* Windows Text Editor
Bamse:
Linux where? Compare with Firefox. In some countries it has like 40-50% market share, in more Microsoft friendly environments 15% on a good day :)
Anyway, from my testing of editors other peoples advice are almost useless. Find one thing that annoys you and program will not be approved. There will be many more requests/demands than those listed I think. Collapsing levels is nice. Dont get too used to that in Notepad++ because PSPad cant do it. Little things can mean a lot. Trial and error but of course cool some list choices. I plan to set up dual boot for the xth time but now it shall be done properly or more smoothly. Did not think of an cross platform editor being useful until seeing kartal post. Will increase smoothness 1% if I can find one. Imagine they suck on Windows but lets see.
Unless "just enough" features is also a demand I think you end up with either pspad or notepad++ so start with them. Notepad++ seems to have most support if you count recommendations, updates, community edition? - but pspad is alive and kicking. If a project is half dead today it might not be great to fall in love so check out general activity level as well.
Tuxman:
the choices seem to boil down to: PSPad and Notepad++. But neither has the powerful regex support I have grown used to with EPP.-widgewunner (February 11, 2010, 08:14 PM)
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Tried GVim? The "best text editor" thingy on the website was obviously written by someone who did not spend more than 5 minutes with any of the tested applications. (Or, at least, was not be willing to RTFM.)
After all, the choice of your preferred text editor depends on many more factors. Just comparing features is not so important, it's also about usability and efficiency. And, after it replaced N++ for me and I have spent some time with it, I think there is no text editor out there which could beat Vim/GVim there.
But it is, probably, just a matter of usage.
edit:
Vim comes with an own regex implementation and a good documentation for it.
f0dder:
community edition?-Bamse (February 12, 2010, 05:51 PM)
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A parallel branch run by some other people than the main Notepad++ developer, DonHo. The idea is to try and implement new features (that might be too "risky" or isn't DonHo's main focus) from the IdeaTorrent site, as well as cleaning up the codebase etc. I was a bit skeptical at first, but changes from NP++CR are merged back into the mainline, so it isn't one of those "wasted effort" branches.
After all, the choice of your preferred text editor depends on many more factors. Just comparing features is not so important, it's also about usability and efficiency. And, after it replaced N++ for me and I have spent some time with it, I think there is no text editor out there which could beat Vim/GVim there.-Tuxman (February 12, 2010, 06:21 PM)
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It's not like I mind vim, it's the editor I use on linux, but I really don't see what's so great about it compared to a decent Windows editor. Yes, you can do some pretty impressive ninja kung-fu keystrokes with it, but I find most of the time I don't need anything that fancy - jumping/selecting/deleting at word boundaries can be done by any normal Windows editor, and is the main feature for getting things done quickly. There's a few "jump around" and selection things from VIM I sometimes miss a bit in NP++, like jump/select inner/outer brace/nesting level, but it's not terribly important for me - and I plan to eventually support it via a plugin. I can "jump to matching brace" (not select, though!), which is good enough most of the time. When I need "powerful navigation", VIM tends not to be good enough anyway - Visual Studio class browser and "find all references" (et cetera) is so much more productive.
Oh, and VIM loads those fractions of second slower, which annoys me - my system default text editor needs to load superfast.
Tuxman:
jumping/selecting/deleting at word boundaries can be done by any normal Windows editor-f0dder (February 12, 2010, 10:37 PM)
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Yes, word by word. Not so fine.
When I need "powerful navigation", VIM tends not to be good enough anyway - Visual Studio class browser and "find all references" (et cetera) is so much more productive.-f0dder (February 12, 2010, 10:37 PM)
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VS? And two lines later you state something about "superfast"?
I may have missed something.
f0dder:
jumping/selecting/deleting at word boundaries can be done by any normal Windows editor-f0dder (February 12, 2010, 10:37 PM)
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Yes, word by word. Not so fine.-Tuxman (February 12, 2010, 10:46 PM)
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[/quote]Which is all I need most of the time, really. Start-line/end-line/entire-line/word boundaries. If I need to jump/select/move more than that, it's not very often something that can be "better defined" (i.e., it'll be n lines rather than block/nesting level... and it would be slower counting lines and using vim "select n lines down" than actually selecting the lines windows-style ;)).
When I need "powerful navigation", VIM tends not to be good enough anyway - Visual Studio class browser and "find all references" (et cetera) is so much more productive.-f0dder (February 12, 2010, 10:37 PM)
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VS? And two lines later you state something about "superfast"?
I may have missed something.-Tuxman (February 12, 2010, 10:46 PM)
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You may have missed my distinction between "normal edits" and "complex source code editing with features VIM has no chance of doing".
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