tranglos, great post! I'm glad I inspired
something 
I've concluded I'll never find a Windows text editor I'm
really happy with, because I don't like the way Windows works. Like you, I find that many seem to be oriented mainly towards programmers, and I'm not a programmer. Again like you, I find I want macros I can edit. My problem is that not being a programmer, it had better be a simple macro language, with enough details in the editor's Help file. I don't want to have to learn Javascript, Lua or whatever just to program the editor.
Incremental search: what is that?
Search and replace in multiple files: I routinely have to make the same replacements if multiple files, so I use a multi-file search-and-replace program, now usually
HFFR Text Workbench. This is claimed to do unicode and Word files, amongst other things, though I haven't tried those features yet.
Text clips: an interesting idea, depending on what's meant by it. I have a variety of programs for text expansion and completion if I want them, and at least completion is included in many editors. Many other programs offer text clips and templates, e.g.
AceText (which I haven't tried) by the author of EditPad Pro (payware), and freewares like
Konrad Pappala's Ka TypeIn. It's simple, but allows you to add your own named variables in templates, e.g. "firstname", "lastname". As a very simple trial, I made one for quoting URLs in DC's SMF. Then there's mouser's own Form Letter Machine (again I haven't tried it), and some template functionality is offered by most clipboard enhancers, like
ArsClip and the clipboard module in Comfort Keys by
Comfort Software. That one is so clever you can build little menus with it.
Short comments a few editors I've tried recently:
- Boxer: abandoned because it doesn't wrap text to the window, so can't see long lines
- EmEditor: abandoned (at least for now) as a consequence of its license. If you use it at work, you exhaust the terms of the license, even if you purchased the license with your own money. The workaround is to install it as portable - but it's crashed on me a couple of times when I've done that, not during basic editing, but when fiddling with macros and configuring. That may not be EmEditor's "fault," but whatever the reason, if it crashes, I can't depend on it.
- PsPad: didn't quite "click," and crashed when making extensive use of the clipboard facility.
- Notepad++: much improved since I last looked at it. Still some glitches, e.g. the only way to make it recognise the AWK syntax file was to uninstall it, then reinstall it as portable: no accelerator keys on some menus; macros saves as XML, which means some folk can edit them, but I can't. Please could there be a free-standing menu-driven macro editor, or something?
- HippoEdit: first impressions are it works well, looks nice, friendly forums, developer working hard, but (apart from no macros yet) it's positioned as a programmer's editor more than a general text editor, which is what I need more. I think the Help file could do with some work, too. It tells you what can be done, but it often isn't obvious how to do it. E.g., there doesn't seem to be a menu item (that I could see) for wrapping text, that's on a button.
- Zeus 3.94a (free): installed, took one look, wow, that's one hardcore programmer's editor!
What I actually use:
DOS editor/word processors VDE and PC-Write, largely because I'm used to them, but also because they're WordStar command set. One more nice thing about WordStar: bookmarks are
to the character, not just to the line. Infinitely more useful for editing text. When I do Windows editors, currently it's
TED Notepad and/or
Crimson Editor, depending on what I'm doing. Lately Notepad++ has been coming up on the outside.
One other note: while the NoteTab editors don't seem to have much mindshare on DC,
NoteTab Pro is due on Bits du Jour at half price on Monday 4th May 2009.
[edit]Forgot to add, there's also
The Semware Editor (TSE), another with little mindshare on DC, and another I haven't tried.
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But did you know that E-Mail Checker gets stamped on by PC-Cillin AV? Another over-enthusiastic false positive?