Use the SciTE text editor

They say that for a true cowboy, their hat is the first thing they put on in the morning and the last thing they take off at night. For me, as a programmer, SciTE is the first thing I startup in the morning and the last thing I shutdown when I go to bed. I'd say that it's truly the programmer's editor (although emacs is a close second).
For me it's main features are:
  • It's open source and in C++. There were some XML stuff I needed in the editor, I coded it and now it's in there (xml.auto.close.tags, and some Unicode BOM support). If this was a comercial application I'd still be waiting.
  • It's cross platform. So when I move all my stuff to Linux (or whatever) I'll still have my editor.
  • It behaves a lot like the Visual C++ editor that I was used to. Nearly all the keys are the same.
  • It's Unix and Mac line ending friendly.
  • It can read anything. Binary files aren't shown in hex, but they aren't mangled either if I decide to modify and save them.
  • Syntax colored text for every language that I'm interested in. Even things like INI files or .properties files is color coded. In a typical day I'll code in C++, Java, Python, PL/SQL, HTML, XML and it can handle them all with aplomb.
  • Highly configurable. Configuration is done through properties files, but it automatically reads them in when saved so you see 90% of the changes right away. For me, I like a nice clean look so I don't use a toolbar. I do like tabs however and have those enabled.
  • It's small, the whole thing fits on a floppy disk, for those who still remember what a floppy disk is.
  • It's rock solid. It hardly ever crashes I have it running all the time.
  • The editor component (called Scintilla) is used in wxPython. If used it in wxPython and it works well.
  • You can teach it to run a program based on the extension. For example, I like to write test in RestructuredText with the .rst extension. Now, when I press F5 it compiles the rst into HTML and when I press F7 it compiles it into a PDF.
  • It now has a macro language with Lua built in. I use Lua in SciTE to handle encryption/decryption of sensitive text on my USB keydrive.
Download it, use it, contribute to it - it's a great text editor.

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