EditPlus - The Greatest Text Editor
April 3, 2006
EditPlus is unmatched in a crowded space of desktop text editors.
This is an application which gracefully handles syntax highlighting for any imaginable programming language. Part of the strength here is in the simplicity of defining highlighting rules. They are all defined in easy to understand text files which are a breeze to modify or supplement. Of course all the common ones are built-in (C, C++, Java, Java Script, PHP, Perl, ASP, HTML, CSS, etc) but there are also a ton of user contributed languages (Maya, Quake 2, Ada, QBasic, FoxPro, LaTex, and so many more).
For those who are interested, it also supports auto-completion files in a similar manner.
Another major win is it’s ability to handle remote files through SFTP (or FTP) in such a way that they are no more difficult to work with than a local file. Other text editors try to accomplish and at least succeed at having the feature, but I’ve seen none that are as seamless to work with.
Keyboard shortcuts can be user defined, so any operation you find yourself doing regularly can quickly be mapped to your favorite keystroke. A huge win for developers.
Finally, the regular expression find and replace has made ad-hoc manipulation of text files something I can do without even thinking about it. All the fantastic abilities that surround this functionality add greatly to my comfort level with the product.
Unfortunately, I have on e criticism. There is no Mac version… This is most unfortunate to me, because EditPlus is the last reason I have for using Windows.
If you aren’t already using EditPlus, and you are on a PC, try this text editor for awhile. You won’t be sorry.
Tags: css, edit plus, editor, editplus, ide, php, regular expression, sftp, shortcut, syntax highlighting, text editor
Comments
9 Responses to “EditPlus - The Greatest Text Editor”
Got something to say?
The ability to edit files remotely is pretty nice, but is of limited functionality when you consider that most projects involve several files.
I found that I was able to connect to a remote server and add remote files to a project, but this support was flaky at best and resulted in application crashes from time to time. Also, when you add files to a project, there is no mechanism for browsing a remote server from there. The only way to add remote files is to first connect to the remote server, open the files, and then add them to your project.
I don’t use any of the project management file grouping stuff in Edit Plus (or any IDE for that manner) I just open the file from the directory as I need them. I’ve had hundreds open at once without issue.
[...] This is the access control list or ACL, it is obviously very hard to read. I use EditPlus to do a regular expression find (;) and replace (;n) on the permissions to clean it up a bit. [...]
You can use edit plus using wine/cross over office - I believe there is a crossover version for MAC now.
I’m using it on Ubuntu Linux with no problems
Agreed!!! Once I found Edit Plus I never looked back. I use regular expression find and replace all the time! Find in Files also supports regualar expressions so no need to grep anymore.
Verticle selection and multi line indention are features that VIM does not even have.
On top of everything its lightweight and fast.
I very much agree that EditPlus is the ultimate when it comes to text editors, and like you, when I switched to a Mac I lamented not having access to it. However, I discovered a very similar program for OS X called TextWrangler. It has the familiar color coding and remote editing (via FTP) capabilities. I strongly recommend it.
While you’re at it, check out PSPad (www.pspad.com). I have the same with PSPad as you have with EditPlus: Found it and never looked back.
It has all the great features of Editplus, but it is open source (and therefore FREE).
Check it out!
EditPlus sucks, I have tried ETextEditor is similar than TextMate for Mac. This is really a good text editor.
Cheers
Dex
[...] I was writing PHP, Zach had turned me on to EditPlus [website]. By far my favorite 2 features of EditPlus were it’s light weight and integrated [...]