My main editor of choice is mostly vi/vim. As I was having problems with the ‘readonly’ capability of vi on my winxp, I got curious on the state of editors out there. Contenders would be TextPad, Notepad2, Notepad++, and UltraEdit. Here’s a summary:

TextPad

  • Free
  • Lightweight
  • Opened up a js file with some Chinese on it. Boom, it converts it to dos.
  • Overall: I uninstalled it

Notepad2

  • Free
  • Lightweight
  • Python syntax highlighting is built-in. Cool. Need to check other languages though.
  • Chinese is fine.
  • Overall: Good Notepad replacement for small editing.

UltraEdit13.10a

  • Commercial
  • Heavyweight yet powerful
  • Lots of syntax highlighting for PLs. I added Python and ColdFusion already! UltraEdit WordList
  • Chinese is fine.
  • Overall: Useful for serious editing…

Note:
You need to append the downloaded wordlist.txt *to your *current wordlist and change ‘L10′ to a free number, say ‘L19′. By default, UltraEdit have L01-L13.

Happy Editing!