Return of the Son of the best *free* Windows Text Editor

[Tuxman]

But I guess your remark was meant to target Microsoft and the differences Vista and Win7 brought? Which is pretty off-topic, since we're discussing Editors, and the post you (part-)quoted was about standardized keybindings.

Hm, it was about the "user interface" actually, which is not restricted to the keybindings. So I was, maybe, wrong.  

[kartal]

Obviously I don't expect *u*x to follow the same standards, problem is that *u*x doesn't have the same kind of standardization... but ah well, this is a different rant, for another thread.

-f0dder (February 14, 2010, 10:36 AM)

I agree, it would have been awesome if Vim and Emacs were using the same standard keysets

-kartal (February 14, 2010, 10:39 AM)

Think bigger, though: systemwide standards. I can user Ctrl+Arrowkeys to jump at word boundaries in most edit controls (whether single- or multiline), I can use shift+navigation to select, ctrl+backspace/del to delete to the respective word endings, there's home/end/pgup/pgdn, et cetera. ONE set of (reasonable) keybindings that are simple to remember and work across pretty much every application on the system.

-f0dder (February 14, 2010, 10:49 AM)

Definetely, and that is precisely what I have done with my Vim settings.

[widgewunner]

... Think bigger, though: systemwide standards. I can user Ctrl+Arrowkeys to jump at word boundaries in most edit controls (whether single- or multiline), I can use shift+navigation to select, ctrl+backspace/del to delete to the respective word endings, there's home/end/pgup/pgdn, et cetera. ONE set of (reasonable) keybindings that are simple to remember and work across pretty much every application on the system.

-f0dder (February 14, 2010, 10:49 AM)

Exactly! Learn once - use everywhere.

And this tangent is certainly NOT off-topic. The standardization of the keystroke bindings for Windows is one of the reasons I keep sticking with it (and the text editors which are keyboard intensive). These keystrokes have become indelibly burned into my brain. Even Mac has adopted the CUT, COPY PASTE hotkey conventions. IMHO this is a *very* good thing.

As an aside - EditPad pro has a one-click selection for WORDSTAR key bindings. Can you say CTRL+K?

[rjbull]

When setting up a new computer for a client, I need a good text editor that can be installed and left on the box. The editor must be free for commercial use.

-widgewunner (February 11, 2010, 08:14 PM)

I used to use Crimson Editor a bit at work, though not as a coder.  Someone in the Crimson Editor forums told me he used it for just the purpose you state.

The free version of EditPad is pretty good but is missing some essentials: Regex search/replace and spell check.

I think the current free version of EditPad Lite is only free for personal use, but you probably know that.  If you want regexp, you have to have one of the newer versions of Crimson Editor, which I haven't tried.

Other requirements are small footprint, fast startup and non-obtrusive invasion of the system registry and file system. Syntax highlighting would be nice but is not essential. Also, it must adhere to the standard Windows keystroke shortcuts (i.e. CTRL+TAB=previous file, CTRL+LEFT=word left, CTRL+RIGHT=word right, CTRL+UP=scroll up, F1=help, CTRL+PGUP=... etc.)

I think Crimson Editor has all those except fast startup.  Also, when I last looked, the Help file was HTML.

So PSPad or Notepad++?

I dabbled with both.  PSPad crashed on me once or twice when I was using its clipboard accumulation feature.  I probably forced the error, but I was too wary to persevere with it.  Also, there seemed very few keys available to bind macros to.  Frankly, it's getting hard to recommend anything other than Notepad++ for your sort of requirement.

[tomos]

a list of Editors (for windows) that are free for commercial use - I put them in spoilers cause the list was so long

========================================================
EDITORS - NOTEPAD REPLACEMENTS - PROGRAMMER/DEVELOPER EDITORS
========================================================

Spoiler

PSPad - Jan Fiala - editor for developers for Microsoft Windows systems
http://www.pspad.com/
"freeware product (both for personal and commercial use)"
Freeware Genius - PSPad: a small, powerful, and versatile freeware text editor
http://www.freewareg...reeware-text-editor/
Freeware Junkie
http://thefreewareju...xt-editor-pspad.html

Notepad2 - Florian Balmer - Open Source (based on Scintilla)
http://www.flos-free...are.ch/notepad2.html
Notepad2 Modifications - Kai Liu
http://code.kliu.org/misc/notepad2/

TED Notepad
http://www.jsimlo.sk/notepad/
"TED Notepad is targeted particularly to users with non-trivial demands and tasks: Those that need to quickly extract info from the text, find duplicate lines or sort them, convert case, replace or reverse something non-trivial, and so on."

Metapad - newly Open Source
http://liquidninja.com/metapad/
"metapad is a small, fast (and completely free) text editor for Windows 9x/NT/XP/Vista with similar features to Microsoft Notepad but with many extra (and rather useful) features. It was designed to completely replace Notepad since it includes all of Notepad's features and much, much more."

RJ TextEd - A Unicode source and text editor.
http://www.rj-texted.se/
"RJ TextEd is released as FREEWARE. However, if you find the program useful I would appreciate a small donation."
Forum
http://www.rjsoftware.se/Forum/index.php

ConTEXT Text Editor - Eden Kirin
http://www.contexteditor.org/
Forum
http://forum.contexteditor.org/

Win32Pad - Gena01 - Gennady Feldman
http://www.gena01.com/win32pad/
Forum
http://www.gena01.com/forum/
"It's FREEWARE. Which means that you are allowed to use it for personal or commercial purposes (without selling it of course). You are also allowed to give the program to your friends"
"Win32Pad is a feature filled text editor that is written with a programmer in mind. Its main purpose is to provide enough functionality that is missing from notepad without sacrificing file size and performance."

NoteTab Lite - Fookes Software
http://www.notetab.com/versions.php
3 versions .. Pro is $29
Additional tools, most are free
http://www.notetab.com/tools.php

LopeEdit Lite - (Author of FileMenu Tools)
http://www.lopesoft.com/en/index.html

QJot - xtort
http://xtort.net/xtort-software/qjot/
"Freeware. For the masses.  ... QJot is a small USB portable alternative rich text editor that reads and writes .doc files, inserts images and more. It is basically meant to serve as a good WordPad replacement."

Xint - xtort
http://xtort.net/xtort-software/xint/

SubPad - xtort
http://xtort.net/xtort-software/subpad/
"no-install USB compatible lightweight notepad clone .. faster find/replace, MRU documents, and syntax highlighting ... find/replace routine is perhaps one of the fastest out there."

TabPad - Michael Dickens
http://www.lfi.net/LFI/prjTP.htm
"LFI.net (Opensource and/or freeware) Applications .. Donations are appreciated, but the programs, tutorials and services provided by LFI.net will always remain free."
"TabPad is yet another Notepad clone - except with tabs."

PlainEdit
http://www.gaijin.at/en/dlplainedit.php
"PlainEdit is a text editor for ANSI and ASCII files. Syntax highlighting is supported for the most common Web, script and programming languages. Many functions for text conversion, formatting, decoding and encoding are included."
License:   Royalty free (Donate button)

NotePad++ - Open Source (based on Scintilla)
http://notepad-plus....orge.net/uk/site.htm
Forum (a bit of a mess, indicating project may be fully ended)
http://sourceforge.n...orum/?group_id=95717

[...]

MORE PROGRAMMER-EDITOR ORIENTED THAN NOTEPAD REPLACEMENT
(this division is very rough, any division-tweaking help is appreciated)

Spoiler

SourceEdit
SourceEdit - Brixoft
http://www.brixoft.net/default.asp
Forums (light activit)
http://www.brixoft.net/forum.asp
"Brixoft Source Edit is a FREE award winning editor especially made for developers. It has syntax highlighters for all the most common computer languages and if you miss one you easily create your own with the built-in Language Editor."
Lifehacker - SourceEdit is a Beefy Text Editor for Programmers
http://lifehacker.co...itor-for-programmers
"Brixoft File Courier is a FTP client application distributed together with Source Edit ... HexSource is a free hex editor that is distributed together with Source Edit. The source code is available and distributed according to the GNU license agreement."   

Programmer's Notepad - Echo Software - Simon Steele - Open Source - (based on Scintilla, as are some above)
http://www.pnotepad.org/
Licensing - http://www.pnotepad.org/licensing/
Forums
http://pnotepad.org/forums/

Open Komodo Open Source GNU, and IDE component
http://www.openkomodo.com/
Mailman Archive Forum (2008) Inactive - http://lists.openkom...m/pipermail/mailman/  - Check others
"very impressive professional editor for dynamic languages" - Smashing Magazine 35 Useful Source Code Editors
Komodo Edit (developers of Komodo IDE)
http://www.activestate.com/komodo_edit/
Mailing Lists (komodo-discuss)
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/

Crimson Editor
http://www.crimsoneditor.com/  (shows nice list of nine other editors with short description)
Email forum
http://tech.groups.y...rimson_editor_users/

Emerald Editor
http://www.emeraldeditor.com/
Forum
http://forum.emeraldeditor.com/
"Emerald Editor is (being) designed to be an open-source multi-purpose, functional text editor, inspired heavily by Crimson Editor. It is available under the GNU General Public License."
Developers direction after Crimson Editor source code was releases
http://forum.emerald...ndex.php?topic=235.0

Scriptly
http://scriptly.webo...art/englishpage.html
"Webocton - Scriptly is an extensive freeware code editor for writing HTML and programming with PHP."
Forum - German
http://community.web...on.de/main/index.php

TotalEdit
http://www.codertools.com/totaledit.aspx
"TotalEdit is free for commercial and non-commercial purposes (its freeware)." Pro is $10
 
Html-Kit
http://www.chami.com/html-kit/
Forum
http://www.html-kit..../hkforum.cgi?g=hbeta
"HTML Kit is a full-featured free editor for HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and other text files. 400+ plugins are available for it .. "

Bluefish Editor
http://bluefish.open....nl/development.html
"Bluefish is an open source project, released under the GNU GPL licence."
New releases, mailing lists, not sure which are active.

AlleyCode
http://www.alleycode.com/
"Alleycode is a fast, sleek and highly productive award winning HTML editor with unique features ... Alleycode is FREE! (we do accept donations if you find it useful)."

Visual Web Developer Express 2008 (above)will has an HTML editor integrated in the package.  The free Visual Studio edition also contains an editor.

HateML Pro
http://www.migajek.com/?c=hateml
Forums
http://migajek.com/myBB/
"HateML Pro is freeware product and a powerful PHP IDE with support for XHTML and CSS for both professional and novice users alike. Designed to help accelerate the process of editing,debugging web applications, php scripts and simple XHTML sites as well."

Dev-PHP
http://devphp.sourceforge.net/
Forum
http://sourceforge.n...orum/?group_id=54728
"Dev-PHP is a well-featured integrated development environment (IDE). You'll be able to create scripts and applications using the PHP scripting language and the PHP-GTK library (both included in the "PHP Package").
Dev-PHP is free software under the GNU General Public License"
Editor is one part of the project.

CodePad (2006)
http://shicola.wz.cz...codepad/features.php
"CodePad may be used free of charge, but if you wish to express your appreciation for the time and resources the author have expended developing and supporting it over the years, I do accept and appreciate donations."

FlashDevelop - Open Source
http://www.flashdeve....php?title=Main_Page
Forum
http://www.flashdeve.../community/index.php
"FlashDevelop is a free and open source (MIT license) source code editor."

Geany - Linux heritage
http://www.geany.org/Main/HomePage
"Geany is a text editor using the GTK2 toolkit with basic features of an integrated development environment... To run Geany under Windows you may need to install the GTK+ runtime libraries"

InType (Alpha)
http://intype.info/home/index.php
Forum
http://intype.info/forums/
"Intype is a powerful and intuitive code editor for Windows with lightning fast response. It is easily extensible and customizable, thanks in part to its support for scripting and native plug-ins."

SciTE
http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html

-Steven Avery (July 05, 2009, 07:28 PM)

[Tuxman]

They forgot to mention Vim and Emacs. Again.

[tomos]

They forgot to mention Vim and Emacs. Again.

-Tuxman (February 14, 2010, 02:25 PM)

click on the link I quoted above -
I removed them cause they were (incorrectly?) listed under unix & the OP was looking for something for windows & commercial use

Here you go

VIM & Emacs heritage

VIM & Emacs heritage (Unix)

Vim the Editor Bram Moolenaar -  (Unix-legacy .. see DonationCoder comments)
http://www.vim.org/index.php forum, wiki
See gVim, the graphic interface.
"Vim is distributed free as charityware. If you find Vim a useful addition to your life please consider helping needy children in Uganda."

Cream - Open Source
http://cream.sourceforge.net/
"A modern configuration of the powerful and famous Vim, Cream is now available for Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and FreeBSD."

WinVi -  Raphael Molle.
http://www.winvi.de/en/
"WinVi is a free editor for MS Windows. ... This editor is especially useful for friends of the Vi editor, who do not want to give up the little conveniences offered by Windows."

XEmacs
http://www.xemacs.org/
Usenet and mailing lists
http://www.xemacs.org/Lists/index.html

GNU Emacs
http://www.gnu.org/s...are/emacs/emacs.html
GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more.

[Tuxman]

Ah, OK. Now it makes sense. 

[Daleus]

I was an UltraEdit user for ages, as my deparmtnet had a license.

But I wanted something for home too. The feature I most apreciated in UE was the block colum mode, mentioned in an earlier post.

Whuile searching for a text editor replacement, Crimson Editor was the only thing I found that was free and had colum editing mode.

As for anyone else's requirements, I have no idea how it might fulfil them.

[Tuxman]

Whuile searching for a text editor replacement, Crimson Editor was the only thing I found that was free and had colum editing mode.

-Daleus (March 09, 2010, 06:59 AM)

Vim is also free and can edit text in columns. 

[Jibz]

But I wanted something for home too. The feature I most apreciated in UE was the block colum mode, mentioned in an earlier post.

Whuile searching for a text editor replacement, Crimson Editor was the only thing I found that was free and had colum editing mode.

-Daleus (March 09, 2010, 06:59 AM)

Just for the record, if you hold down Alt while selecting in Notepad++ it uses column mode (so Alt-Shift-cursor keys for instance) .

[f0dder]

But I wanted something for home too. The feature I most apreciated in UE was the block colum mode, mentioned in an earlier post.

Whuile searching for a text editor replacement, Crimson Editor was the only thing I found that was free and had colum editing mode.

-Daleus (March 09, 2010, 06:59 AM)

Just for the record, if you hold down Alt while selecting in Notepad++ it uses column mode (so Alt-Shift-cursor keys for instance) .

-Jibz (March 09, 2010, 07:07 AM)

Which works fine for copying text or doing find/replace, but pretty much not anything else - definitely not comparable to a column editing mode

[ajp]

PSPad fan for years, myself. The powerful CLIPS functionality alone is worth it. As someone else pointed out, it's closer to the IDE concept than to a "plain" editor. It's really extensible and it does not need 100+ MB (and lots of RAM) as Eclipse does.
They seem to have solved most of the line-wrapping bugs now.

Recently, I tried RJ TextEd and it's quite cool too, but no powerful clips and no Python syntax definition

PSPad has no code-folding, but I make do with the code explorer.

To all the VIMers and EMACSers: I too love VIM (not EMACS), but I think not everyone is into the right mindset for this kind of editors in this day and age. Bill Joy himself claims he wrote vi for a very different era, one with only 300 bps of bandwidth.

[Jibz]

Which works fine for copying text or doing find/replace, but pretty much not anything else - definitely not comparable to a column editing mode

-f0dder (March 09, 2010, 07:10 AM)

What can you do in UE that is more advanced?

[Tuxman]

Bill Joy himself claims he wrote vi for a very different era, one with only 300 bps of bandwidth.

-ajp (March 10, 2010, 01:11 PM)

Now how is a text editor related to bandwidth?
edit: nvm, just read it.

But in our multi-MBit days, it is still not a bad idea to use lightweight software. It hasn't become worse over all the years. 

[mwb1100]

What can you do in UE that is more advanced?

-Jibz (March 10, 2010, 05:44 PM)

I think the key thing is that when you're in column mode in UE and have a column selected what you type goes on all lines in the column. Some people seem to use it a lot (I'm not one of them, but can see it being handy if you do need it).

[f0dder]

Which works fine for copying text or doing find/replace, but pretty much not anything else - definitely not comparable to a column editing mode

-f0dder (March 09, 2010, 07:10 AM)

What can you do in UE that is more advanced?

-Jibz (March 10, 2010, 05:44 PM)

Haven't used UE for years, so can't speak about that - but Notepad++'s column editing mode is rather simple. It's not as bad as I remembered it being, though, after just grabbing a recent version: you can actually do edits affecting the selected block. But it feels like somewhat of a hack: as soon as you do any kind of navigation, you're no longer in "column editing mode". I guess it's based around a selection block, but once you start typing the selection block is no longer visible, and shift+tab isn't all intuitive either.

[normeus]

pspad for writing code, textpad for sorting files and reg ex , edit plus for running and editing scripts, notepad++ just because

[kartal]

PSPad has no code-folding, but I make do with the code explorer.

To all the VIMers and EMACSers: I too love VIM (not EMACS), but I think not everyone is into the right mindset for this kind of editors in this day and age. Bill Joy himself claims he wrote vi for a very different era, one with only 300 bps of bandwidth.

-ajp (March 10, 2010, 01:11 PM)

Well Pspad is definetely a good app. But it is not as sophisticated as Vim in my view Vim offers one of the best code folding customization out there in my opinion.

The weird thing about Vim(I use gvim) is that it feels very archaic in the beginning but then you appreciate how  sophisticated it is later. Vim also offers an amazing custom coloration features.

Since I have started using Vim code syntax and vim code colors, my coding activity has increased dramatically becuase it has become so much fun to deal with text and code.

[Tuxman]

For me, PSPad had some serious performance problems (just like Slickedit, which has fine config abilities indeed). I wonder why.

[Jammo the OrganizedFellow]

I do tons of html/css coding.
Let's say for example, I have the following simple code:

[Select]

</head>



<body>

2 html tags separated by several blank rows.

Currently, in Notepad++ (v5.7 as of this entry), I have to manually delete the few rows between those tags.
I've got dozens of pages that need this correction.
Sometimes, it's between the closing of one div tag, and the opening of another, so now I've got dozens of (what I call) GAPS inbetween my code.
No biggie, as it's just wasted space, a few bytes here and there.
But when I'm done coding a site, that's one of the last things that I do. Is remove all the unnecessary spaces, tabs, etc. to shave off some download times. Minimal, yes, but over several dozen and sometimes a hundred pages, it makes a difference.

I would have thought that doing a Find & Replace using

[Select]

</head>\n\n\n<body>

would work, but it doesn't.


Does anyone know of a multi-line editor (lightweight ofcourse) to assist in this little feature?
Or perhaps a plugin?

[Tuxman]

Vim can.

:%s/\n\{2,}//g or something should do.

[Jammo the OrganizedFellow]

Vim can.

:%s/\n\{2,}//g or something should do.

-Tuxman (November 06, 2010, 12:51 PM)

EEK!
That's scary just looking at it.

I was hoping to avoid regular expressions.

When I used to use EditPad (years ago) it had a feature that I could highlight a few rows, and hit the Find & Replace hotkey. It allows multiline ability like that. I'll check it out.
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
EDIT:
http://www.editpadlite.com/ does what I need.
I find it a little time consuming having to learn a new app just for a simple function, but it was simple.

[Jibz]

I would have thought that doing a Find & Replace using

[Select]

</head>\n\n\n<body>

would work, but it doesn't.

-Jammo the OrganizedFellow (November 06, 2010, 12:36 PM)

I assume you have search mode set to extended to allow escapes like \n. If your file is using DOS line endings, try using \r\n instead of just \n.

[Jammo the OrganizedFellow]

I assume you have search mode set to extended to allow escapes like \n. If your file is using DOS line endings, try using \r\n instead of just \n.

-Jibz (November 06, 2010, 01:42 PM)

NEAT!
Thanks!

I didn't know about the \r