Recommened Text Editor

[BeyondCloister]

Can anyone recommend a good text editor?

I am ideally looking for something that is:

a) free
b) syntax colouring (HTML and PHP required)
c) multi window view on to same document

[backslash]

The usual suspects would be:
Text Wrangler - which is a sort of cut down BB Edit. Get it from Bare Bones Software. This is my personal recommendation.
Sub Etha Edit - it seems to be aimed at collaborative documents but has a following around here.
Emacs - beloved of those who talk fluent binary. There are many versions around and I'm sure some of them do syntax highlighting. You also usually get built in games. It is quite wierd to use though.

[Taxxodium]

TextWrangler, Xcode (although it's probably overkill)

[OneSadCookie]

There's also this: http://smultron.sourceforge.net/ though I know nothing about it.

Personally, I like TextMate. No, it's not free, but it's like having the best bits of the other Cocoa editors and the best bits of Emacs rolled into one.

SubEthaEdit's not free for commercial work, and only versions 2.2 and below are free for noncommercial work.

I personally can't stand the System 7 look & feel of TextWrangler, but there are plenty of people who swear by it :)

[akb825]

Whenever I don't use XCode for coding, I always use gvim.

[BeyondCloister]

I've decided to give Smultron a try. It looks good so far, but a day of proper use will let me know.

One feature that has already grabbed my attention is that you can save your prefs to your iDisk. Useful when using multiple computers.

[kordova]

I have had a Mac for two or three months and I prefer Xcode (though I cannot fathom why vertical split view is actually a horizontal split and vice versa), Aquamacs and am beginning to enjoy TextMate.

[Duane]

Emacs - beloved of those who talk fluent binary. There are many versions around and I'm sure some of them do syntax highlighting. You also usually get built in games. It is quite wierd to use though.

emacs is the editor of angels (and ruby their language)

EDIT: the latest stable of emacs does syntax coloring...

[FreakSoftware]

Can anyone recommend a good text editor?

I am ideally looking for something that is:

a) free
b) syntax colouring (HTML and PHP required)
c) multi window view on to same document

Free? Boooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:p


For anyone who cares, I'm going to plug my own app:
http://www.araelium.com/

[Taxxodium]

emacs is the editor of angels (and ruby their language)

You're kidding right?

[unknown]

Dunno if angels would only program one language... but emacs sure is nice to use its a shame I suck at it and cant be bothered learning how to use it fully though.

[Joseph Duchesne]

Personally, I would have to say SubEthaEdit is worth getting. As I've never actually sold shareware, I have a free version (well, ok. I made $5 once, selling one copy of my game to some poor person :P), but I plan on buying it. It's worth it.

[Duane]

You're kidding right?

Hardly. I never kid about emacs.

I tried textmate, and I was very impressed, though I would never shell out that much money for it. Also, their ruby run scripts were broken... :mad: otherwise, I would recommend it. It's very full featured; perhaps the best of the cocoa ones.

If you have access to it, and a terminal, I highly suggest emacs. EVERYTHING is a few keystrokes away.

[ThemsAllTook]

BBEdit/TextWrangler still works much better for me than anything else I've tried. I haven't yet found anything that even comes close.

It all depends on your needs, of course...

[Greywhind]

I use Smultron - it's even got support for D! (nuf said). Also, project saving is useful...

[FreakSoftware]

BBEdit/TextWrangler still works much better for me than anything else I've tried. I haven't yet found anything that even comes close.

It all depends on your needs, of course...

What does TextWrangler have that others don't? All the text sorting, removing duplicate lines, blah blah blah stuff?

[ThemsAllTook]

What does TextWrangler have that others don't? All the text sorting, removing duplicate lines, blah blah blah stuff?
It's not any one particular feature - it's more the cohesion of all of the features together. There's a seamless and easy way to do just about anything. My workflow in BBEdit is very efficient, and almost nothing in the application almost ever gets in my way when I'm trying to get something done. This property can't really be quantified as such... It's more of an intuitive "it feels right" sort of thing.

With any other text editor, minor annoyances usually pile up pretty quickly. I can give plenty of examples if you really want to get into it. With BBEdit, the things that annoy me are relatively few and far between.

[BeyondCloister]

Smultron is what I did end up going with it and serves my purposes well so I never bothered looking any further.