Comments on: OS X coders, what is your freeware text editor of choice?

Question: OS X coders, what is your freeware text editor of choice?

brownpau — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 07:15:05 -0800

OS X coders, what is your freeware text editor of choice? Something with syntax highlighting, line numbers, auto-indent, a versatile local open/save dialog, and [optional] FTP Open/Save. Right now I use SubEthaEdit and jEdit and like them both, but I'd like to see what other software I may have missed in Googling.

By: bshort

bshort — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 07:32:01 -0800

Are you looking for an IDE for Cocoa programming, HTML scripting, or just general coding?

By: brownpau

brownpau — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 07:34:10 -0800

General coding, but mostly HTML and PHP.

By: jazon

jazon — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 07:52:28 -0800

You asked for Free, but I would highly reccomend BBEdit. BareBones also offers TextWrangler, their replacement for BBEdit Lite (but unlike Lite, TextWrangler is not free).

For more applications, check out HyperJeff's OS X Apps Page (text editor search results) for a rundown of existing Mac apps.

By: mdeatherage

mdeatherage — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 08:05:23 -0800

Yeah, sorry, but if you want a programmer-friendly text editor, you owe it to yourself to use the 30-day free trial of TextWrangler. If you're going to do a lot of hard-core HTML writing, skip TextWrangler and try BBEdit, but TextWrangler sounds like exactly what you want.

By: seanyboy

seanyboy — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 08:07:01 -0800

SciTe looks promising, but my all time favourite text editor is textpad. Not freeware, but if you use an editor (And I USE my editor), 30 dollars isn't excessive.

By: hijinx

hijinx — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 08:07:47 -0800

I use and swear by BBEdit Lite (which is still available at the bottom of this page.) TextWrangler does appear to be worth the price though.

By: dobbs

dobbs — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 08:29:02 -0800

Jedit is free and good (jedit.com) but if doing serious html editing, I recommend bbedit.

By: mrbill

mrbill — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 08:42:10 -0800

I like VIM.

By: mrbill

mrbill — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 08:43:34 -0800

dobbs: its jedit.org

By: seanyboy

seanyboy — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 08:46:34 -0800

And next time I'll try and read the question before I start piling in with the answers... Thankyou.

By: bshort

bshort — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 08:47:17 -0800

emacs!

Seriously things like vi and emacs allow you to always keep your hands on the keyboard, are radically configurable, are free (beer and speech), and are widely available.

They tend to have a high learning curve, but they rock. Utterly and completely.

By: perplexed

perplexed — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 09:45:42 -0800

For a while I was programming on a slow iBook and so I dumped BBEdit for something more lightweight: SubEthaEdit. Now I'm on a faster computer but I find myself opening SubEthaEdit way more often than BBEdit.

It hooks into Panic's Transmit for the FTP/Save/Open functionality.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 09:53:50 -0800

I'm on Windows, and I vouch for SciTE (which is cross-platform compatible). Nice and light, starts up instantly, just enough power.

By: auzten

auzten — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 11:07:59 -0800

For html and small php things I've been using SubEthaEdit as well.

However, for larger php things I've been using Eclipse (which is what we use at work on our windows boxes) with the PHP plugin, which is pretty nice. The HTML syntax highlighting isn't great, but it works okay for me.

By: squirrel

squirrel — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 12:20:03 -0800

Pico or VI from a terminal shell. Really.

By: amery

amery — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 12:48:25 -0800

I asked this question a bit ago (just reference -- no callout intended), and after using all the suggested editors for a spell I came back to my one true home: vim.

What they say about the learning curve is true. It won't look like you want it to or behave like you expect when you start, but this is a small matter compared to the speed, power, and flexibility you'll have access to if you stick with it.

As a bonus, nearly every *nix machine you use will have emacs or some vi variant. It's good to be able to use both if you're a programmer, just in case you ever find yourself in a situation where you don't have access to your editor of choice.

By: brownpau

brownpau — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 14:53:11 -0800

Amery, thanks for pointing out your prior thread. I would not have posted this one had I seen it. As it is, the whole exercise has served mostly to reinforce my SubEthaEdit habit, though I do tip my hat to you emacs users. It's what I use when I'm in the CLI. Because vi sucks. </troll> j/k ^^,

By: xmutex

xmutex — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 16:22:43 -0800

Plus if you use vi or vim you get to condescend to anyone who may use one of those fancy-pants editors. That's pretty priceless.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 21:41:16 -0800

Geez, SubEthaNet looks freakin' cool! Is there anything like it for the Windows world?