What Do You Use?

[ShadowProwler420]

What text editor does everyone use?

So far in school I've been using jEdit (for Perl, but I know it can be used for alot of other languages, too).

[gm9]

Have always been using just Windows' notepad, but recently moved to Notepad++ due to some encoding shortcomings of the former. Yours looks interesting as well.

[Talyns]

I also use Notepad++.. Been using it for a while and in my opinion it's quite literally the best free plain text editor around.

[FloridaFringe]

Sorry for the Necro Post but I had a couple of questions relevant to this thread.

1. Does Notepad++ create any of the encoding issues upon Opening and/or Saving EQ2 XML files? I read something about this but wasn't quite sure if I should be worried about it. Currently I only use the UI Builder and the standard WinXP Notepad.

2. Are there any Plug-ins for Notepad++ that I should consider installing?

3. Any further word on jEdit and whether or not I should be considering that instead of Notepad++?

Any insight would be highly appreciated. Thank you kindly.

[Othesus]

If you do any text editing at all you will love Notepad++. Get the XML plugin too.

EQ2 XML files should be saved as UTF-8 but it almost always doesn't matter. ASCII usually works too. A bunch of the default XML files are in ASCII. If you're getting some strange error double check that your file is UTF-8 though.

In the Windows world UTF-8 has a non-standard byte sequence (EF BB BF) at the beginning of the file to identify it as UTF-8. You can see this by pressing the H button in Notepad++. Without this byte sequence most text files in UTF-8 would look exactly like ASCII text. See here for more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utf-8

When you open a messy file in Notepad++ go to the Plugins menu to XML Tools - Pretty print (Text indent) and everything is much easier to read. You can change the type of indentation in the Preferences - Misc - Tab Setting window.

I haven't used jEdit but I think I looked at the web site a long time ago.

Let us know if you have any more questions.

[FloridaFringe]

Thanks for the info. I haven't read the link yet but I have made a bookmark to it so that I can look into it soon.

I was originally going off information provided by Zonx in the following thread: Link (about half way down).

I have since tried his test mentioned on page 2 of that thread and all seemed well. So it would appear that it's safe to assume that Notepad++ doesn't change the encoding so it should be safe to Open & Save EQ2 XML files with it. As opposed to following his Tips for Open, Copy & Paste from Notepad into Notepad++ then back again for Saving.

Would that be the consensus or is there something else I should consider before diving right in and losing Notepad all together?

Thanks again for your help.

[gm9]

The only tiny issue I ever noticed with Notepad++ is that on some operations it switches from Windows to Unix line break style (CR+LF to just LF). That again only became relevant with encoding for some japanese characters. But Notepad++ is doing that during editing, so you see it when it happens and can switch it back.

Apart from that Notepad++ is the most complete free text editor I have ever used. Quite useful is also the "check xml syntax" option and the possibility to collapse/expand xml nodes, making navigation easier.

The UTF-8 implementation is very stable, which made me switch to Notepad++ in the first place, because windows notepad has some issues (most recently see here). So yes, Notepad++ is highly recommended to be your only text editor. I DO NOT recommend to use windows notepad!

[FloridaFringe]

Thanks for the quick response. I was trying to hurry up so I can wait for GU38

This past week has been interesting for me as I've now switched over to Notepad++, Winamp & Firefox from my 3 all time trusted pieces of software. Kind of exciting for me as I've always been the type to put off change until the last minute, even though I always end up loving the changes in the end.

Thanks again for everything.