Notepad is noremally on the bottom of the list whenever a coder is being told of applications he can use to write his code in. Primarily because it's features are limited.
Some time ago I came across NotePad2 and slowly fell in love with it. Because I was able to write webpages using it and it was colour coded. It also colour codes XML, CSS, Java, C++ and other programming languages. I was laughed at and told to use EditPlus which also does the same thing but is a little more advanced and gives more features. EditPlus however, was not free ( baisc cost US$30) and based on that fact NotePad2 took the cake for me.
While browsing today - Nov.06.06 - I came across a few other applications that do the same thing - Intype, Textmate and Programmer's Notepad. Because I'm almost always looking for free applications I took a special interest in Programmer's Notepad.
I found Programmer's Notepad to be light, user friendly and has the following features:
- Bookmarks (both numbered and plain)
- Code Folding/Outlining
- Docking tool windows - much better than those in version 1
- Excellent external tool support with user-configurable
output matching - click on errors and warnings to jump right to
the place in the file where they were generated - Export to HTML (using CSS) and RTF
- File association manager
- In-file method/definition navigation (using Ctags)
- No limit on file size (although large files may take a while
to load) - Non fixed-width font support
- Projects and Project Groups with multi-level folders and
file system mirroring - Quick Search toolbar with links to Google and Google Groups
- Regular expression search and replace
- Support for unicode files
- Support for windows, unix and macintosh file formats
- Syntax highlighting for many languages through “schemes”.
- Tabbed MDI interface
- Text Clips
- Unlimited number of schemes supported, powerful syntax
highlighting supporting both user-defined and built-in schemes - User-defined schemes (XML)
- Word-wrapping
I think the application is a nifty one and helps new comers to the coding world to better read and understand their code.
Product Sites:
Programmer's NotePad
URL: http://www.pnotepad.org/
Notepad2
URL: http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html
Intype
ULR: http://intype.info/home/index.php
Textmate
URL: http://macromates.com/
