Can you suggest a good Win7/8 compatible script editor?

Joseph_Sliker

Hi;

Cut to the chase: I just want a simple script/text editor that will work well with Win7 (or even 8, if I have to go there). (I'm most familiar with Crimson Editor) Any suggestions?

No, I don't want a whole rigmarole "development environment" like Eclipse.

I have happily been using the most recent version of Crimson Editor for years and years to do my .php scripting, but I find that some of the Win7 machines I use (like mine at home) always fire the UAC whenever I start it up. I've been farting around playing with compatibility and admin permissions for the last couple of hours and can't seem to get rid of this pesky problem. (It's strange that the Win7 box I have at work...over which I have little control...does NOT have this problem. But my home/personal computers DO!)

Thanks for any new suggestions.

NogDog

I've been using Komodo Edit (free version, Komodo IDE is the paid version with more bells and whistles) for at least a couple of years now and am quite happy with it.

If you want something a bit thinner than that, there's always Notepad++.

bradgrafelman

Something slightly less thinner than Notepad++ (and my personal weapon of choice 🙂) would be Vim.

traq

NogDog;11037423 wrote:
I've been using Komodo Edit (free version, Komodo IDE is the paid version with more bells and whistles) for at least a couple of years now and am quite happy with it.

After using Komodo Edit for a year or so, I decided to get the IDE about 4-5 months ago. It is totally worth it.

laserlight

Geany, but I seem to be its only vocal proponent around here, heh.

sneakyimp

I would imagine that "good" is in the eye of the beholder and depends on what features that particular developer wants. I use Eclipse on an Ubuntu workstation, save all my PHP locally, and test via Apache. Having developed on windows for years (and having tried development on a Mac), This is by far my favorite setup. The features I really like:
1) Project-based file management helps me get to the code I'm after faster
2) If you put Javadoc comments in your code, the IDE allows enormously helpful autocomplete features which make it so much easier to get your parameters right and avoid typos when typing function names, var names, constants, etc.. Autocomplete rocks my world.
3) Hitting the F3 key when you have any function highlighted instantly takes you to that function's definition.
4) Automatic syntax checking makes it super easy to catch syntax errors before they become a problem.

I suppose if I was more assiduous about everything, I could get the code stepping to work but in practice I have found this to be more trouble than it's worth. If someone has some magic tips I'd love to hear them.

EDIT: This is the Eclipse I'm talking about (with Zend PDT): http://www.eclipse.org/pdt/downloads/

Weedpacket

Yeah, but the question is for a simple editor; an IDE is something else again.

I used Sublime Text 2 for a while; it has some pretty neat features (including multi-file regular-expression search-and-replace; multiple insertion points), but I found its PHP support (i.e., syntax-highlighting and smart indentation) to be somewhat behind the curve.

Then there's my old standby, Programmer's File Editor. Last updated last century, but in some ways its age works in its favour in that it doesn't bog down trying to do too much.

dalecosp

(With lifted sword) ... "vi is the standard text editor..." 😃

NogDog

dalecosp;11037513 wrote:
(With lifted sword) ... "vi is the standard text editor..." 😃

Following that logic:

"SGML is the standard mark-up language."

"C[no pluses] is the standard programming language." (Okay, maybe that's still true?)

(Actually, I used to be halfway decent with EMACS and much preferred it over vi, but sadly, those skills have largely eroded away.)

Joseph_Sliker

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions and discussion! I've installed Komodo and Geany and both seem to be at a reasonable level of complexity, so I will try to give each a fair shake over the next few weeks. I think the first/most difficult thing to get used to is the different font-color palettes compared to Crimson Editor. I know I can modify such things, but am trying to avoid as much putzyness as possible at the moment.

sneakyimp

I remember being forced to use emacs and vi in college right about the time MS Word came out. In fact, I had seen MS Word first. I saw Emacs and vi and thought, "you have GOT to be kidding me."

Nowadays, I like nano if I must use the CLI. It's actually not bad if you have the proper syntax highlighting configured with your nanorc files.

Weedpacket

dalecosp wrote:

(With lifted sword) ... "vi is the standard text editor..."

ed, man! man ed

dalecosp

NogDog;11037535 wrote:
Following that logic:

Actually, the standard joke is that religious arguments, like "which editor is best", are NOT logical.

I might contend that some arguments in actual religions are more logical than the editor question, but there's plenty to reflect on in the standard joke ... 🙂

dalecosp

Weedpacket;11037563 wrote:
ed, man! man ed

😃 !!!

NogDog

If you'd like, take a look at this thread, where I uploaded my Komodo Edit config file for the spiffy color scheme I use. 🙂

johanafm

NogDog;11037535 wrote:
(Actually, I used to be halfway decent with EMACS and much preferred it over vi, but sadly, those skills have largely eroded away.)

Assuming your LISP skills have not degraded at the same rate, you should be able to fix emacs to work like vi 😉
Umm, and… not sure which editor wins out on this. But you can call it vi++ if you want to 🙂

Weedpacket;11037563 wrote:
ed, man! man ed

The closest equivalent would be edlin on a microsoft platform

… it continues to be included in the 32-bit versions of current Microsoft operating systems.

I'll +1 vi and emacs for editing and smaller scripts / projects. But personally I believe that if you are working on anything beyond the scope of a few files of a few hundred lines each, you really should get an IDE. Necessary? Definitely not. But it will save you lots of time in the long run. My current favourite is PhpStorm. Getting xdebug integration is super easy and takes no more than a few minutes at most. And it works via the web server, meaning you set the break points server side, but interface with the code through your browser.
Other things I like are
- data sources: define connections to your databases, and it will check identifiers in SQL strings in your php code as you type
- jshint / jslint integration
- includes tools to handle your git merges, conflicts, etc. If you screw up, you may still need the command line. But if you don't, you won't 😉
- built in code styles for psr1/psr2
- everything Sneaky describe for his editor, but with different (and cooler!) keyboard shortcuts for the same features 🙂

Derokorian

+1 for PHPStorm

Bonesnap

+1 for Komodo Edit, but I find version 8.0.2 to be far superior than the 8.5.x branch that has been released recently. The new versions have more features, but the code intelligence/auto-complete/hinting/whatever took a huge nosedive even though they touted it as being improved. I was the only one in my office who upgraded to the newer versions and the only one who had issues with code intelligence. We just formatted our computers and reinstalled and I made sure to put back the older version. No one else did - they all installed the new version. Now I'm the only one with proper code intelligence 😃

I have heard good things about PHPStorm.

Derokorian

Well I use both Komodo Edit and PHPStorm. I use PHPStorm to manage projects and such, and Komodo Edit for quick one offs and such. I like them both very much, and while I may not use both of them every single day, I certainly use both of them every week.

traq

Bonesnap;11037583 wrote:
+1 for Komodo Edit, but I find version 8.0.2 to be far superior than the 8.5.x branch that has been released recently. The new versions have more features, but the code intelligence/auto-complete/hinting/whatever took a huge nosedive even though they touted it as being improved

I have the 8.5.3 release - I haven't noticed any problems…? what sort problems did you run into?