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Best Text Editor for Windows?

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Rlan

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I've been doing a Bachelor of Computer Science for a while, but my current choice of text editors are pretty meh. Notepad Wordpad aren't bad, but I need something more.

I've been using gedit at Uni and I tend to like it. But it's for Linux only it seems. Anything like that [possible with term highlighting?] for Windows?

Notepad2 is pretty good, but it hasn't got the tabs to switch between files like Gedit does.

Any help???
 
Hidemaru is my favorite windows text editor. A link can be found here . If your native language is English but not Japanese then you can download the English translation Maruo here .

*Edit* It's actually nagware but it's a darn good editor. So good I eventually ended up paying for it...
 
Get gVim, learn some of the keyboard commands and wonder how you lived without them.

Really though, I don't know what gedit is like so can't compare something similar... what is it you like about gedit? What features?
 
There's a Windows version of plain GNU Emacs in addition to XEmacs, I believe.

Otherwise, SciTE is OK, as is jEdit.
 
Free:

emacs for Windows
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html

For those that like emacs.

vim (vi)
http://www.vim.org/download.php

If you're hardcore old school.

Non-Free:

Visual Slickedit
http://www.slickedit.com/

A lot of hardcore professional devs I know swear by it. Has excellent source browsing and indexing features. Works great on huge projects (and I mean huge projects).

Source Insight
http://www.sourcedyn.com/

Best code browsing and syntax highlighting I've ever used. Fancier than Slickedit, but doesn't work quite as well on really big projects. A lot of hardcore professional devs I know swear by it. Smart Rename and the Relation window have saved me more time than I can remember.

Smart Rename is the coolest feature ever -- hit Ctrl-' and rename something, and the editor will figure out what references need to be changed throughout the project, taking into consideration scopes and classes. Ex: If you have Class1::Method1 and Class2::Method2, and you rename Class1::Method1, it will figure out it needs to also change every instance of pInstanceOfClass1->Method1(), but not pInstanceOfClass2->Method1().

Most editors do syntax highlighting, but Source Insight actually parses and understands the structure of the code: you can do things like browse the class heirarchy, references, and other cool stuff without ever having to compile anything.

Plus there's always Visual Studio. See if your school has a site license. It's got a decent programmer's editor built in.
 
Ferrio said:

My seething hatred for java aside, this is the best free one I've used. It feels sort of like emacs, but is actually made to be used as a GUI.

I am also excluding emacs and vi, because, ffs, if you're in a GUI you may as well use it.
 
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