February 8, 2007 at 5:27 pm
· Filed under Stuff
Recently I’ve been looking for a text editor like textmate without having to get a mac. I want the windows equivalent damn it.
Over the years I have used many IDEs and text editors. The only one that I was really attached to, wasn’t even a real text editor (F4 I think it was the edit key). It was norton commander. God I loved that thing. Then windows was everywhere and supposedly there was not going to be need for using the keyboard anymore. I wonder how that turned out.
So, while hunting for a decent alternative to textmate on windows, I thought I would have to give up or write my own. I just want an editor for plain old text, ruby, lisp, javascript, css and the occasional html file. How hard can that be?
Here’s what I have tried so far:
Eclipse. I like Eclipse and all, it’s a great IDE, but I really want a text editor, not an IDE.
Notepad2. It has been my favorite text editor for a long time, but I want more than what it can give me. I want some shortcuts a la textmate. I want to type table and get a barebones html table.
jEdit. It’s okay I guess, but it’s a java app, feels like a java app. Also closer to an IDE than to a text editor. I didn’t play with it too much though, so maybe it’s better than it looks.
Scite. I’d rather use notepad2.
Before I started using eclipse 3 years ago, I used to be a huge intellij fan. I’ve been toying with the idea of going back, so I could use the brand new ruby plugin. It’s an IDE though.
Ultraedit. Meh, too busy, not impressed
Slickedit. Tried it years ago. Can’t remember why I didn’t like it, but I’m not using it now, so it must have been a good reason.
Intype. Very promising! Still very alpha though. But now we’re getting somewhere.
Nothing really exciting, except for intype, quite promising indeed. Then I came across this today:
e-texteditor. Ah! this seems to be it! Feels like textmate, ie, a text editor that wants to be an ide, instead of an ide claiming to be a text editor. So far it seems to be well worth the $35
I’m very excited, it seems that I’m done.
Just for completeness, I’m still not going to use:
- emacs
- vi
edit:
Others I had forgotten or didn’t know about:
textpad. I’ve used this one in the past, and it was decent. Ultimately I gave up on it, when I started using notepad2.
editplus. This one I didn’t know about and would have been a serious candidate, if I was not looking for something more like textmate (clean interface and more importantly; completions)
Permalink
Luke said,
February 8, 2007 @ 10:36 pm
Have you tried:
http://www.textpad.com/
and
http://www.editplus.com/
Both are fine windows text editors, with syntax highlighting, and small set of features useful for programmers. For example, TextPad lets you define shortcuts that will trigger arbitrary command - so for example you can set up Ctrl+1 to compile current code, Ctrl+2 to run it, and etc…
Vi and Emacs are still the best ;)
Julio Santos said,
February 9, 2007 @ 6:19 am
textpad I had used, but forgot to mention. I used it for a year, until I discovered notepad2. It’s true that being able to run commands from the editor is a fine thing, but I don’t mind alt-tabbing to a dos window.
editplus seems interesting. I couldn’t figure out how to have text shortcuts like textmate. I want to type table, press TAB, and have the editor expand table to a bare bones table tag, like the one on the screen shot, or in java type “class” and have the skeleton of a class. that sort of thing.
I’ll add these two to the list, thanks!
Luke said,
February 9, 2007 @ 8:36 am
Ah, that’s actually a pretty cool feature! When I want that I usually look at IDE’s.
I use Eclipse for all my Java coding. You just can’t beat it’s compile-as-you-type setup. I also love it’s debugging features. It’s fun to stop your code at a breakpoint, and be able to see the contents of each variable.
I used Dreamveaver to do that sort of stuff for me in php - but that thing is bloated.
Bob Evans said,
February 9, 2007 @ 1:35 pm
I’m so happy that I overcame the emacs learning curve. It ended this problem pretty much completely.
I appreciate that the curve is huge, but it just keeps paying off with each new language I use, and with the daily light-weight text munging tasks.
Jeffrey Fredrick said,
February 9, 2007 @ 4:24 pm
Pfffft. Just admit you made a mistake and get a mac!
Then learn emacs! :)
Julio Santos said,
February 9, 2007 @ 8:51 pm
> Pfffft. Just admit you made a mistake and get a mac!
never!!!
> Then learn emacs! :)
I’m not that smart