Notepad++
This
is probably the best free text editor for Windows out there; with
support for simple things—like syntax highlighting and folding—all the
way up to FTP, Notepad++ should tick most of the boxes. I’ve used the
editor as my main editor quite a bit, and one of my favourite features
is File Status Auto-detection: when NP++ is made the active program, it
will check all currently open files for changes and let you know if any
file has been updated / deleted. Notepad++ is based on the Scintilla
editing component.
JEdit
Jedit
is rather ugly in my opinion, but it has a decent feature set; as a
Java program, it’s actually multi-platform. It offers syntax
highlighting for over 130 languages. The website says it supports
folding, but I couldn’t get that to work (although it does highlight the
opposite bracket). Jedit has a plugin repository, which may give the
editor a bit more functionality.
Notepad2
Notepad2
is also based on the Scintilla editing engine, but it’s much simpler
than Notepad++. It bills itself as being fast, light-weight, and
Notepad-like, and offers syntax highlighting for a variety of languages.
There’s no installation for this editor: just unzip and run. There are a
few modified versions (with more features / languages) available.
Programmer’s Notepad
Programmer’s
Notepad has a similar interface to that of Notepad2, although it does
support having multiple files open at once. It supports bookmarking,
folding, and highlighting, but other than that, there isn’t too much to
mention.
Crimson Editor
Crimson
Editor offers macro support and the ability to execute external
programs. It has the ability to edit remote files, using a built-in FTP
client; there’s also a spell checker and a neat ‘column select’ mode.
ConTEXT
ConTEXT
supports many languages, both programming and human; it also gives you
the ability to define your own custom languages. It does file comparing
and exporting to HTML, and includes some interesting behaviour for
projects. Another neat thing: ConTEXT remembers where your cursor is
when you close a file, and puts it back there when you re-open the file.
SciTE
SciTE
is a really simple text editor, based on Scintilla. It’s quite basic,
but it does support syntax highlighting for around 30 languages and
regular expression search and replace.
Editra
Editra
claims to be in the early stages of development, but it offers a decent
bunch of features: user profiles, auto-completion, session saving, and
syntax highlighing for 60+ languages. Plugins can extend the feature
set, offering an integrated python console, FTP client, file browser,
and calculator, among others.
PSPad
PSPad
brings templates, an interesting internal web browser, and a macro
recorder to the table. It also supports hex editing, and some degree of
code compiling. PSPad offers integration with TopStyle Lite, which may
come in handy if you use it for writing CSS.
RJ TextEd
RJ
TextED, too, offers integration with TopStyle Lite; and it does HTML
validation and formatting. It sports an FTP client, a file browser, and a
code browser, as well as a character map and support for email.
SourceEdit
SourceEdit
includes features such as clipboard history, syntax highlighting and
autocompletion for a decent set of languages. A hex editor and FTP
client beef this one up a bit, too. Oh, and it does macros, too.
TotalEdit
TotalEdit
does file comparison, RegEx search and replace, and has multiple
options for file backup / versioning. For cleanup, it offers (X)HTML and
XML customizable formatting, and a spell checker. You can install
TotalEdit on a USB drive, making it portable, if you want; you can also
easily send the current document as an email.
Emacs
“Beyond
just being able to edit plain text files, Emacs includes special
features to help you write in many different programming and markup
language. Emacs can compare two files and highlight their differences.
Emacs is a file manager. Emacs can read news, mail, and RSS feeds. You
can even play tetris in Emacs. You might see now why some people
consider Emacs to be not merely a text editor but almost a complete
operating system. Some users find that they can do almost all of their
work from within Emacs.”
Vim
Vim
is an incredibly complex text editor, more similar to Emacs than any
others on our list (although Vim and Emacs users seem to be
somewhat at odds
). I don’t think I could do it justice in a few sentences, considering
that there have been whole volumes written on it (not to mention that I
have only a cursory knowledge of Vim). Suffice it to say that Vim
probably has every feature mentioned in this article, and a few hundred
more. For starters, check out
“Vim in 6K”
Bespin
I
know Bespin isn’t really a Windows text editor, and it hardly has the
feature set that other editors do, but I thought I’d throw it into the
mix just because I really like the concept of an online text editor and
because it has one big (obvious) feature that the rest don’t: cloud
access to your code. It also offers syntax highlighting for HTML, CSS
and JavaScript.
Textpad
TextPad
is a rather simplistic editor: it boasts column select, drag-and-drop
text between files, and hyperlink support. It also supports large files
(based on the size of your virtual memory). That’s it? Well, the feature
list also mentions a right-click menu.
E-Text Editor
This is one of the most interesting editors, mainly because of the ‘foreign’ features it brings to Windows:
“Close
integration with cygwin [a Linux-like environment for Windows] gives
you access to the full range of UNIX shell tools and lets you extend e
with your choice of languages like Ruby, Perl, Python and more.”
Another
one of e’s strong points is that it accepts TextMate bundles; it also
supports revision control, so you don’t have to keep track of multiples
versions of a file.
In-Type
Intype
is a pretty neat little editor that’s still in development. It
currently doesn’t have a whole lot of features (you can’t even drag and
drop text), but it looks like it will be pretty slick. It does snippets
really well, and already offers a pretty wide selection, as well as
supporting about two dozen languages (with support for creating
additional ones). Keep an eye on this one; it’s promising.
EditPlus
EditPlus
doesn’t have anything unique, but there are some niceties: it
highlights URLs and email addresses, activating them when you ‘crtl +
double-click’. It also has a built in browser for previewing HTML, and
FTP and SFTP support. Macros and RegEx find and replace are good to have
as well.
HippoEDIT
HippoEDIT
offers something a bit different when it comes to autocomplete: in pops
a ‘tooltip’ above your cursor as you type, suggesting words you’ve
already typed. It does syntax highlighting for over 2 dozen languages,
and includes code templates for many of those languages. HippoEDIT also
has customizable keyboard shortcuts and workspace layouts.
UltraEdit
UltraEdit
almost seems more like an IDE than a text editor; there are hundreds
(easily thousands) of features packed into this one. Obviously reaching
out to more than just web developers, UltraEdit is ultra-customizable,
with different ‘environments’ to choose from, depending on what job
you’re doing. Supposedly “nearly every editing task” is automatable.
UltraEdit also supports FTP and has a built-in SSH/telnet console for
accessing your servers.
Sublime Text
Sublime
Text is probably one of the most fun editors that I looked at, mainly
because of its super-cool ‘zoomed out’ view of the file that you can pan
around on. One drawback is that the preferences dialog is really just a
bunch of text files; this can make it a bit difficult to tweak settings
if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. I like the option to
open a local file when you right-click on its link, and there are a few
automation features, so this would make a solid choice of a text
editor.
