UltraEdit like app for the Mac??

October 2, 2005 8:17 PM

What is your fav. text editing OS X application? I need syntax highlighting for as many languages as possible, S/FTP, among most other common funtions (line numbering, block un/commenting, block indentation, etc). The best on the PC in my opinion is UltraEdit, nothing i've used on the Mac comes close. I'm currently using TextWrangler but I miss much of what UltraEdit offers. Any suggestions?
posted by joshgray to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)

You might like jEdit. I've never used it on OS X, but I've enjoyed in completely in the Windows world.
posted by mmascolino at 8:24 PM on October 2, 2005

Jump up from TextWrangler to full-fledged BBEdit. it handles syntax coloring and s/ftp, as well as most of what else you are looking for. It's my primary website developing tool of choice.

And I'm in the opposite boat as you - I need a good text editor for Windows and will have to check out UltraEdit.
posted by jazon at 8:31 PM on October 2, 2005

As Jazon suggests, BBEdit is your beast of burden for text editing on MacOS. Always has been, always will be.
posted by shagoth at 8:54 PM on October 2, 2005

Response by poster: UltraEdit is great - only gripe is they make you pay a smaller upgrade fee when they jump version numbers (not every update, just every once in a while). I have no problem paying for continual updates to an already great product so no worries.

I'll try BBEdit again. Something about it turned me off at first though i forget what it was now.
posted by joshgray at 9:12 PM on October 2, 2005

It does everything this side of Emacs.

So why not just use Emacs? Emacs will do everything you need. It's a wonderful, wonderful tool. It is more than a lot of people need, granted, but if you really want all those features, and are working in multiple languages, you sound like a serious enough user that you might as well just use the real thing.
posted by freebird at 10:20 PM on October 2, 2005

TextMate is the best os x text editor. it doesn't have built-in ftp (it's very bloat-free), but there's nothing stopping you from rigging up a simple applescript/shell thing.
posted by tumult at 10:40 PM on October 2, 2005

I personally love Emacs on my Mac. The one that comes with OSX is not a full gui app, but you can install Enhanced Carbon Emacs, which very much is.

It took me about a week of pain to transfer from Ultraedit to Emacs (back when I was still forced to use a Windows machine at work) and I've never looked back. It is an incredibly powerful editor and is infinitely extensible. It either already does what you want, or else you can find an extension which adds it.

Plus, nxml-mode is simply the best XML editor I've ever had the pleasure of using in any editor. Outstanding.
posted by Invoke at 10:40 PM on October 2, 2005

I'm with tumult, when it comes to code, TextMate rules all. I used to use BBEdit, and happily left it.
posted by I Love Tacos at 11:05 PM on October 2, 2005

mmm...yummy Carbon Emacs, checking that out now, invoke. Do you know if it does Tramp?

There's a question, which I ask of you non-Emacs lovers in good faith: do these other editors - which I know smart people love - do remote editing? FTP doesn't count - I want to edit files that live elsewhere over SCP. Once you get a taste for that it's hard to use anything that won't do it.
posted by freebird at 11:13 PM on October 2, 2005

I third jEdit. I love its cross-platform capabilities, and its feature set—already rich—can be extended with an easy-to-use Plugin Manager.
posted by Monochrome at 12:01 AM on October 3, 2005

Third TextMate - it's insanely customisable and macroable. WAY cheaper than BBEdit.
posted by pollystark at 2:49 AM on October 3, 2005

I wrote a blog entry last year along these lines, asking about tabbed editors for OS X. And, in addition to the editors mentioned here (TextWrangler, TextMate, BBEdit, and jEdit), another suggestion which came up is Smultron. It has a tabbed interface (well, more like one of those drawer jobbies) along with syntax highlighting.

Jon Hicks also wrote an entry late last year asking for editor recommendations on OS X. Personally, I haven't yet made up my mind.
posted by Handcoding at 9:04 AM on October 3, 2005

textmate textmate textmate. the bundles are killer, active development, lightning fast
posted by menace303 at 9:36 AM on October 3, 2005

I spent a lot of time looking for a good editor for my powerbook. I write a lot of scripts in PHP and Ruby and write code in various languages from C to C# to Java. I have finally settled with eclipse. It may be a little more than you are looking for as it is a full blown IDE, but it has plugins for almost everything. It's written in Java which made me shy away a little bit but this is a very well written program and isn't stigmatized by the "slowness" that is associated with some Java programs. If you have some time, at least give it a download and try it out. And here is a good place to start when you are looking for plugins.
The subclipse plugin is absolutely wonderful.
posted by chrisroberts at 10:27 AM on October 3, 2005