Should I get a new text editor? | The Coffeehouse

This discussion about Japanese Localization, and my suggestion to try notepad, made me think about how much I use that little app... at any given moment I probably have 3 - 5 instances of it open. 5 right now in fact; a couple web.configs, the source of a couple of web pages and a 'scratch' one that I've just been collecting notes about some EventLog errors on the C9 production web server. Whenever I need to construct any text (a to do list, a sql query to email to someone, a list of errors from an event log), I hit Windows Key + R and type notepad ... and work there.

I wonder if, since I use it so much, I would be happier with another program? Anyone have any suggestions?

Rowan

EditPlus is my weapon of choice, a nice upgrade from Notepad.

Edit: just realised the thread you linked to mentioned EditPlus too, and well, I've never dealt with other (human) languages.

littleguru

Visual Studio is a great text editor... i use it a lot since it is most often open. Btw. why would you edit a web.config in notepad when you can double click it to open in VS?

Duncanma

In reply to littleguru

#Jun 21st @ 1:40 AM

strangely enough, that never works for me. If I right-click a file and select 'open with Visual Studio 2008' ... I always get this:

[Window Title]
C:\Users\Duncanma\Downloads\wholockme\Install.txt

[Content]
Windows cannot find 'C:\Users\Duncanma\Downloads\wholockme\Install.txt'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again.

[OK]

This isn't a new problem for me... but it is consistent across all my machines (http://duncanmackenzie.net/blog/trying-to-open-a-file-into-vs-20052008--never-works-from-explorer/default.aspx)

littleguru

In reply to Duncanma

#Jun 21st @ 1:50 AM

Just tried it with a web.config. Works perfect. Do you have an addin for Explorer or something installed that might cause the problem? Antivirus?

Even for .config files: you should be able to open them by double clicking them.

Sven Groot

In reply to littleguru

#Jun 21st @ 1:52 AM

Works perfectly here as well, for any type of file.

ZippyV

In reply to Duncanma

#Jun 21st @ 1:50 AM

Maybe it's because you run vs as admin.

figuerres

FRACK!

I had a whole bunch to say and hit cancle by mistake!

http://www.textpad.com/

it's good, check it out.

I love it.

GoddersUK

I <3 notepad Smiley

zian

This may indicate that I'm an impatient person but whenever I need to jot things down, I use OneNote.

Yes, even for code. Big Smile

I'm not sure which languages OneNote supports though.

wisemx

In reply to zian

#Jun 21st @ 8:00 AM

I still use Editpad with VS2008, since VS2008 requires thinking time for some odd reason.

As for OneNote, I've seen a lot of developers using it now just for themselves rather than a team.
May give that a try.

Bas

In reply to zian

#Jun 21st @ 8:00 AM

I'd love some sort of OneNote plugin for code. Just enabling syntax highlighting, or even some class diagram stuff.

jeffsand

In reply to Bas

#Jun 21st @ 11:13 AM

Portable Notepad++ is my preference. I keep a copy in my Live Mesh, by doing so its available on all of my machines and even via the web if I am on a machine that doesn't have Mesh installed. Bonus is that my preferences are stored on my mesh so it always remembers the last files I opened, etc.

JChung2006

Notepad is on every Windows machine and just works. I would love to see an extensible Notepad where you could add just the features you wanted though. Like emacs but without the crazy key bindings.