Notepad++ replacement [closed]

Question

I've been using Notepad++ for a while now, but I noticed it doesn't have code snippets (I found the QuickText plug-in, but it doesn't work anymore), so I'd like to switch editor and my requirements would be:

1. Fast startup.
2. Code snippets.
3. Ability to use themes.
4. File tree view (or plug-in, which does that).
5. FREE if possible, but I'll consider buying if it's exactly what I want.

What are you using?

Undulatory

Does it need to be free? – Shumaker

I hate to be the "you're asking the wrong question" guy but.. (and also the "I hate to, but..." guy) why is it you lean on code snippets so heavily? It's often a sign that your code could be better factored. – Batruk

Themes? Seriously? – Scathing

@skaffman: I hope they are referring to different color schemes of syntax highlighting with that. – Jilly

Phil, well i know how to write basic code, so i don't want to waste time writing it again and again... Skaffman, it's color schemes, i like dark screen. – Undulatory

@Phil Nash: How about #ifndef MYFOOBAR_H_INCLUDED\n#define MYFOOBAR_H_INCLUDED\n\n\n#endif\n? And that's just one of many examples... – Quintuplet

@Thomas, that's actually the only thing I've ever used snippets for :-) – Batruk

@bah, then why not factor it into a library or something? – Batruk

Leaving as comment because it doesn't address all your needs, but a blindingly fast tiny editor .exe is NitroLite, powereful for what it is, and free. sanestudios.com/n2.html – Zymo

Answer 1

The E Text Editor (clone of TextMate for Windows) is worth a look. It supports all TextMate snippets, has a file tree view (watch the screencast), has multiple themes, and starts up relatively fast.

Shanty

LOL! You have beaten me in just ONE second... I'll take a screenshot of that! – Livvie

I'm still pondering whether »Close integration with cygwin« should count as a drawback or advantage. – Jilly

@Livvie - I'll give you an upvote as consolation :-) @Johannes Rossel - Cygwin makes Windows (somewhat) usable for me. Don't knock it! – Shanty

@Ben Hoffstein I also voted for your answer :] – Livvie

I'm trying it now, first impression quite good, is there bespin theme or do i have to make it myself? – Undulatory

@bah Since E Text Editor is a TextMate clone, you can use TextMate themes: deepend.com/mdiolosa/Bespin.tmTheme – Livvie

Might be worth pointing out that the link appears to now be parked – Practice

Answer 2

I bought an editor, which is said to be TextMate for Windows:

• E

Livvie

I'm also using E-text-editor, and I'm addicted to it. You should try the trial. – Lozenge

I've tried so hard to like E-the-Text-Editor, but had to give it up, because it crashed all the time (on both my work and home PCs). I could not recommend buying 'E' until the bugs are really worked out. – Withdrawn

@Withdrawn Still E seems to be the big winner (4+5=9 votes so far), I think your PCs were exceptions or you just had an old version of E – Livvie

Indeed, it was probably over a year ago when I gave up on E, and there have been a lot of updates since then. Maybe I should give it some grace and try again, eh? – Withdrawn

Answer 3

Try Notepad++ with the Explorer and SnippetPlus plug-ins. (They are not installed by default but are readily accessible from the NPP plug in manager.)

With those plug ins in place all of your requirements are met for free.

Imperfect

Answer 4

Assuming by themes you mean configurable syntax highlighting then Zeus editor has all of these features.

Zeus is shareware but there is also a freeware Zeus Lite version.

Quadragesimal

Answer 5

IMHO there is nothing better than Notepad++, the best thing to do is write a plugin.
My second favorite would be Redcar but may fail you at the speed issue. Screenshots.

Neighbor

Answer 6

Even though there's already an accepted answer, I'm going to weigh in with a couple alternatives:

• Intype is trying to do the TextMate-alike bit on Windows as well. It doesn't have a file explorer per se, but it does have a "Project Sidebar" that you can drop a working folder onto.
• Programmer's Notepad is "Yet Another Scintilla Editor", like Notepad++. It does have a file browser plugin and text clips.

Maracaibo

Answer 7

Well, there is always Emacs. It does everything that you ask for, and a lot more. The only real downside is the learning curve (C-x C-s to save, C-x C-c to exit etc), but it's a myth that learning Emacs is hard. And you don't even have to learn that much in order to use it (like with VIM), learn the basics and learn more when needed.

Also, ErgoEmacs seems to be a good place to start. I wish I could have discovered it before getting too familiar with vanilla-Emacs. Oh well.

Eminent

Answer 8

Possibly UltraEdit, TextPad, SlickEdit for your needs.

(Personally, I'd go with gVim though).

Dizon

If someone does want to switch from Notepad++ to Vim I'd certainly recommend gVim. But it is a big switch from Notepad++ (and all other editors). Reasons for gVim over Vim: 1) for Windows it handles syntax highlighting properly which Vim via cmd.exe/powershell doesn't, 2) The menus are very helpful for learning the commands, 3) More of the commands that you might hit accidentally through muscle memory will still work / be harmless e.g. Ctrl + S / Ctrl + arrow. My personal path was Notepad++ > Netbeans > Sublime Text > gVim (Windows) / Vim (Linux) – Economy

Answer 9

I'd say give jEdit a try.

1. Takes maybe 10 seconds to load on my machine here (faster if you're running the pre-loader server)
2. haven't tried it, but pretty sure some of the plugins can do it
3. Comes with a few themes pre-loaded, but several plugins let you customize it even more
4. The basic open dialog is good, but get the ProjectManager plugin, and it gives you a lot more options

In case you can't tell, a lot of the stuff you're after is in the plugins. Even if not for these, I'd still suggest every programmer keep it around, even if just for the following:

• Editing by FTP/SFTP (via plugin)
• Able to recognize any (or, about a hundred or more types, anyhow) text file encoding, and open & save it appropriately
• Multi-line editing
• Multi-line search & replace
• Regex S&R (easier than most other editors I've seen)
• S&R across all or filtered files in a directory
• Any installed plugins don't feel like additions, they feel like they're just built-in
• Basic syntax highlighting for nearly every type of file (Except VB, strangely)
• I've been using it for about 5 years now, and I'm still finding new features

EDIT: just timed it, and it takes about 3-4 seconds to open here.

Breechblock

10 seconds! If an editor takes more than 1 second to load I usually start thinking its time for my daily reboot (unless I'm on my Mac, in which case its my monthly reboot ;-) ) For the record I really dislike jEdit, but YMMV – Batruk

Although I Agree with you, jEdit has quite a lot of problems. Startup is way too long (proper programmer's editor should take less than second to start), there are some weird cursor behaviors, and you can actually make it crash. Unfortunately, there aren't many alternatives - everything else is either too weird, or have a screwup somewhere because of "extensibility"... – Gram

can't believe a java application I will launch 10 times a day – Paucity

-knock, knock! -who's that? (long pause..) -Java!. – Plea

@Gram cursor issues? Never seen that sort of thing. – Breechblock

@Slokun Cursor issues means that compared to MSVC or most of other editors I used, it has some kind of weird cursor placement rules when you do Ctrl+Left/Right cursor Key movements. jEdit treats some parts of text as words, while most of other editors behave differently. A tiny thing but is very annoying. Plus, default hotkey mapping is "strange", and so on. All of this can be tuned, of course, but that defeats the purpose of good editor - i.e. you can't get on any machine, download it and start working instantly. Having to install Java is another problem. – Gram

@rochal - I just got that ;-) – Batruk

Answer 10

After years of perpetual searching for a good text/code editor on Windoze, I settled on Cream, which is basically a big extension to gVim.

It gives you all the power of Vim and compatibility with Vim plug-ins like the NERDtree file explorer, but with common command shortcuts (Cntl-O for "Open", Cntl-S for "Save", etc.), full menus, and yes, even pretty color themes. As a bonus, it's cross-platform, so the editor I use in Windows is the same one I use in Linux. I highly recommend giving Cream a try.

Withdrawn

Answer 11

Textmate and Emacs are both garbage, I'm baffled as to why these plain over-glorfied notepads get so much attention. Notepad++ is ten times better than either of these.

What you need is a full blown IDE and even without knowning which language you code, I can recomend one that supports most of them.

Netbeans FTW, you won't find anything better and it is free. Only downside is the fast startup requirement. But those few extra seconds are well worth what this amazing IDE can do. You name it, Netbeans can do it!

Boote

If you delete the first paragraph this is a reasonable answer. But the first paragraph shows more your lack of knowledge rather than that there is anything wrong with Textmate and Emacs. – Economy

Answer 12

I've been using Notepad++ until recently, but I've just discovered jEdit. I like it quite well. Yes, it took 20 sec. to come up on my machine. Now consider this: with a multi-document editor such as jEdit, Notepad++ I just start one instance, and open other documents in it without having to restart it. Big, fat, hairy deal. Aptana Studio takes eons to come up, and they still sell it. The real time saving/time wasting of an editor is what it DOES, not how fast it STARTS! Why do you think so many people prefer XP over Vista? Faster starting, but slower running? That's a hard sell. Here are some things I noticed right off the bat that jEdit does that N++ does not:

1. Underlines spelling errors, and nicely ignores tagged entities (via the VoxSpell plug-in)
2. It can, as they say, "hard rap" text to anything you set it to, instead of having to copy a number to the clipboard to wrap text to, as in TextFX's woefully out of date plugins.
3. Tag completion that works in PHP
4. Automatic downloading plug-in mechanism, with lots of good plug-ins
5. Multi-platform capability
6. You can rearrange the toolbar, and run macros from it.
7. The Autosave is not a plugin, and saves to a temporary file name, (same as original, but enclosed in #hash# marks), so you don't have the problem of overwriting a file you weren't ready to save yet, just to be protected in case of a crash.

The SnippetPlus plug-in gave N++ a good snippet capability, at long last, but the Clipper plug-in works very similarly in a dock window. Tt runs WAY faster than Eclipse and Aptana, which are also in Java, and is comperable to native editors in speed for what I have used it for, so far. It's free. It has a CSS editor which works well, except for the preview. It supports a number of version control systems. In short, I already like it better than N++. I haven't noticed any cursor weirdness, or other glitchyness. In short, after fiddling with it for a few days, I think it has better feathres for editing HTML than N++. The things I list above can be fixed or added to N++, but they are there already, in a slow-starting, but otherwise flawless (at least in my experience thus far) application.

Roster