h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Can someone help me 'cause i dunno wich text editor to use that
suport's syntax highlighting for source files.
I need it for programing seriosly.
See you later...

On which OS? For which language?

As general choices, vim and Emacs both run on almost everything, and highlight virtually everything, and what they don't come with someone's usually written a highlighter/indenter for it that you can add on.

Free, too. Vim's a bit of a pain to learn, and very unusual, but well worth the effort. Emacs is more normal to start with, but still a pain to learn all the keyboard shortcuts which always seem to me to be less consistent. Vim's are odd, but at least they're logical.

Emacs lover!

I use vim.

but I recomend kate (KDE)

-- DoctorMO --

Did I say I was an Emacs lover in my post? No indeed I did not.

I personally much prefer vim. Kate's okay, but you have to be able to put up with the whole KDE look and feel which I really don't like much.

The IDEs which come with Borland languages always seem to do it, although I have only really tries out C and C++. It really might help to know the language and system you are intending to use.

If it helps at all, IMHO syntax higlighting is not very helpful, and where possible ends up being switched off by me. However, automated indenting is a real boon, provided that it can be overcome when the need arises. This feature makes it much easier to enter, say MASM source code into the Quick C editor, than into Word in unformatted mode. (Sorry the example is old and quaint, but I am old and might be considered quaint.)

well you were going on a bit about emacs, emacs is like a bleedin os in itself

try JEdit, java based a bit slow but bluddy good.

Old Hairy, I'd contend that syntax highlighting is incredibly useful. I find it most helpful indeed, helps me spot typos - especially unterminated string constants. Auto-indentation in C-like languages is also great for spotting missing semicolons or closing braces/brackets.

That said, my boss isn't that fond of syntax highlighting. It may just be what you're used to of course.

I recommend TextPad. Great editor, though you have to find syntax files for stuff like MIPS or other asm etc (it has Java, C/C++ and HTML, maybe more automatically in there).

You can also let it compile and run applications for you if you like (like an IDE)

www.textpad.com but note, it's only for Windows

If you're on a Mac, SubEthaEdit's pretty good, and written by Hitchhikers' fans too!

It's PFE (Programmer's File Editor) for me, on Win32 at least...

http://download.com.com/3000-2352-904159.html

That one was popular at University, although I preferred vim of course.

The best thing about SubEthaEdit is the collaboration/sharing of the active document in real time. But on the Mac, BBEdit is the standard. Pepper is also good, and it's Mac/Windows/Linux/BSD compatible.

This question has been referred to Ask h2g2, see F19585?thread=409017. I suggest that any further replies are posted in the new thread (that is, in Ask h2g2).

Well, since he hasn't come back to comment...but from what he posted, is it not likely that he wants to take source code from web pages and put it in an editor that will colorize the tags? Wouldn't textpad then be a good suggestion. If that's not what he needs, then I humbly defer to the resident geeks here.

Whoops, OH I read you backwards.

PFE rocks, afa Windows products go. And it can read linux text natively, as well, which comes in quite handy when you work in two systems.