Simply put, NEdit is the most usable text editor I've used on any platform, and the best for programming. It is written in Motif (compiles fine with LessTif as well), and the entire program is a single executable weighing in at <800k. Nedit is open source (GPL), and it builds correctly on just about any UNIX system. It will also apparently work in Windows (Cygwin) and MacOS X.
NEdit deftly maintains a wide (and growing) variety of useful features while not developing featuritis, and is easily and fully configurable without being bloated. It does everything you could ask of a programming editor (except IDE-type things like project management or smart auto-completion), and it does them in a way that makes sense. Features that can't be configured in the program itself (like background color) can often be customized via X resources.
Some people claim to have used UNIX all their lives and can put up with vile Emacs multi-level keystrokes, or only slightly less annoying Vi modal editing. And then there's people like me who deserted Windoesn't for its supreme suckiness, but miss the no-nonsense, flat, non-modal design of its applications. Thank God I discovered NEdit, I was going bonkers grappling with Vi. Ctrl-V.... pastes! Ctrl-Q... quits! Ctrl-Up... jumps up a paragraph! Features that require more than one keystroke, like finding text or setting a mark, pop up a small dialog box, and automatically focus the cursor in the right text field. Amazing... just like it should be!
NEdit features:
- Easy-to use mouse-based editing: Almost everything you can do w/ the keyboard accelerators you can also do in the menus.
- Highly configurable regex-based syntax highlighting. Almost every major programming language has a default pattern, and dozens more are available for download. If your favorite language isn't there... write it up yourself, it's easy.
- Unlimited levels of undo. This will save your ass, trust me.
- Intuitive, fast, efficient default keystrokes, which are configurable if you don't like them.
- Easy to learn C-like macro language, with keystroke learn-replay ability. Large library of built-in editing functions as well.
- VERY handy regex find-text and search-and-replace. Design your own code factoring. Also great for systematically hardlinking large nodes.
- Built-in documentation.
- Shell integration, with preconfigured spellchecking, word counting, line numbering, text filtering, make, and more.
- Configurable wrap and tab settings and support for multi-platform line endings. View code the way it's meant to be viewed.
- CTags and Exuberant compatible.
- Parenthesis/bracket/brace matching. Highlights either the matching delimeter, or the entire enclosed range. Also jumps to the matching delimeter with Ctrl-M
- Rectangular selection. I've wanted this in a billion other editors.
- Secondary selection - replace selected text with whatever you select.
- Powerful fill-paragraph feature, that works with the rectangular selections. Align your text at 80 characters the proper way, even with indentation.
- Possibly more; I seem to discover a new handy feature every time I use it.
My only beef (and I mean my only one) is that it's a Motif application and not GTK. Motif is fine for now, but GTK will evolve for the future whereas Motif will not.
NEdit is included in almost every Linux distribution, although not always by default. You can also find it at http://www.nedit.org
If anyone cares, NEdit stands for
Nirvana Editor. But everyone realizes that sounds way too
silly for such the
functional, no-nonsense product it's become.