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Your Favourite Editor?

purelithium

purelithium

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 28, 2006
355
0
Kingston, Canada
I am currently using Text Wrangler as my primary text editor, but don't really like it, and can't seem to find one that floats my boat, so to say.

So.. What's your favourite editer for creating those fantastic pages you all create? If you want to help me out, just write a short description on what the editor is, if it's a plain text, or if it has special features like Syntax highighting(I'm looking for this!)

Hopefully I'll find a favourite of my own in this thread!

Thanks a lot.
 
I'm mostly interested in what you guys like, and I usually can go from there. It's not that I don't like it, it just doesn't have that "this is home" kind of feel. I used to use Kate when I used linux, but that was a KDE only program I believe. I loved the tabbed feature of it, I don't like having to pull down context menus or trying to find another window just to switch between a few files I have open at once.

Does that help any?
 
frankblundt said:
you don't use the slide-out documents bar? It works just like tabs, only as a document list.
Click to expand...

It's too big, it takes up an additional 1/3 of my screen width when I only have 3 or 4 files open. I'd rather have tabs ;)
 
I still like using the source editor in OmniWeb... but that is what I've been using for years now.
 
Smultron!

Smultron is all I use. It's lightweight, manages multiple files into a "project" (if desired), and is simple. There's no real learning curve.

Smultron

Additionally, it's free and open-source.
 
vim. Once you learn a few of the commands, it's very powerful and efficient. :D Until you learn a few of the commands, it's useless :rolleyes:

Syntax highlighting, auto-indenting*, regular expression find/replace.

* (to turn these on by default in OS X, create the file ~/.vimrc with the following lines:
Code: 
syn on
set ai
 
That's my problem, why should I have to learn a whole new way of using a text editor just to use something that's "powerful" Sure, Emacs was powerful, but goddamn hard to learn to use... Why? That's the kind of thing I DON'T want.

;)
 
purelithium said:
I did download it, I'll try it and see if I like it, but if I don't, I'll stick to TextWrangler.
Click to expand...

You should watch the textmate screencasts I mentioned above. :cool:

It has really great syntax highlighting as well. You can even build your own themes. Here is one I did:

textmate_theme.gif
 
purelithium said:
That's my problem, why should I have to learn a whole new way of using a text editor just to use something that's "powerful" Sure, Emacs was powerful, but goddamn hard to learn to use... Why? That's the kind of thing I DON'T want.

;)
Click to expand...


Of course you don't have to, but that's the price of admission. I'm not sure anyone actually sits down and says "I want to learn how to use this convoluted thing", until they have to, as they have to edit something on a remote *nix box, and pico et al. are useless. Once that happened, I really can't use anything else. I use TextWrangler a bit for local stuff on my Mac, but I find it so cumbersome having to go from the keyboard to the mouse and back. I also put ":w" all over the place in textwrangler (':w' is the save command in vim).
 
purelithium said:
Ugh, I'm a student, and I don't think I can afford to pay 40 Euro for a text editor.
Click to expand...
I hear you... loud and clear.

A few months ago, I went through my apps folder and tried to convert my regularly-used apps to free/open-source ones. I've been very happy with it, as there are some great free apps out there. The most notable changes:

Vienna replaced NetNewsWire
Smultron replaced TextWrangler Demo
Camino replaced Safari
 
radiantm3 said:
You didn't mention that. :cool: You said what's your favorite editor and why. :)
Click to expand...

I know, I was asking for your opnions, and that's what I got. I knew most of the suggestions wouldn't be perfect solutions for me, but there's always a gem amidst the gravel.
 
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