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Best Text Editor for OSX?

I

iFanboy

Guest
Original poster
I have been using TextEdit up until now, but have recently realised a few of it's limitations. Eg, I had a file from an app I use that needed to be edited and a small bit of code C+P'd into it. TextEdit opened the file but showed it as a blank file?

I downloaded and installed TextWrangler, and it worked perfectly. However, I don't really like TextWrangler all that much, and was wondering whether you had any alternatives that you use that are better than TextEdit?
 
iFanboy said:
I have been using TextEdit up until now, but have recently realised a few of it's limitations. Eg, I had a file from an app I use that needed to be edited and a small bit of code C+P'd into it. TextEdit opened the file but showed it as a blank file?

I downloaded and installed TextWrangler, and it worked perfectly. However, I don't really like TextWrangler all that much, and was wondering whether you had any alternatives that you use that are better than TextEdit?
Click to expand...

vim
 
What don't you like about Text Wrangler?

It's what I use for quick text edits. I find it loads super fast, and opens pretty much anything I throw at it.
 
If you're just talking quick edits, TextEdit is my favorite. Free and built in.

If you're talking something bigger like an essay or similar document, Pages works great. Plus you get Keynote (and Numbers) with that. Keynote is light years ahead of PowerPoint.
 
For something free, nano is a nice, quick editor that isn't as unintuitive (at first) as emacs or vim.

Wouldn't recommend BBEdit since you don't like TextWrangler already.

Textmate works well also- I find it loads much faster than BBEdit depending on the document size.
If you're talking something bigger like an essay or similar document, Pages works great. Plus you get Keynote (and Numbers) with that. Keynote is light years ahead of PowerPoint.
Click to expand...

Pages is not a text editor.
 
iFanboy said:
Do you mean macvim?

http://code.google.com/p/macvim/

Hmm, that looks promising! Is this what you use? Is it any good?
Click to expand...

I use gvim (aka "vim -g"), which is the standard distribution, but macvim is good too.

vi and emacs (and their various incarnations) are probably the most powerful text editors out there. vi (and vim, etc.) are "modal" in that you switch between command mode and editing mode, and designed to allow you to do very powerful things without ever using a mouse. Emacs is probably easier to learn, but, when using the keyboard, has more confusing key combinations to do things. In modern versions, which support the GUI, mouse, scripting, etc., both are probably pretty comparable for a newcomer.

For programmers, both support code folding, integration with compilers, etc.

vi changed my coding life :) And a large chunk of AMD's K8 (opteron/athlon 64) was designed using vi :)
 
Textmate for me. It's great for coding.

I only use Vim when working in the terminal. I just can't remember all the keyboard shortcuts for it.
 
Funny the OP should mention TextEdit. Snow Leopard has totally revamped TextEdit with more options and functionality. This is just one of the things I like about SL, people think Apple didn't do anything to it but under the hood stuff but it's always the little things that are purposely overlooked since people seem to care only about what they see immediately upon boot.

So if the OP decides to upgrade to SL soon he might want to drop by an Apple store or Best Buy and check out TextEdit on SL and see if the upgrade offers some features that will satisfy him.
 
HLdan said:
Funny the OP should mention TextEdit. Snow Leopard has totally revamped TextEdit with more options and functionality. This is just one of the things I like about SL, people think Apple didn't do anything to it but under the hood stuff but it's always the little things that are purposely overlooked since people seem to care only about what they see immediately upon boot.

So if the OP decides to upgrade to SL soon he might want to drop by an Apple store or Best Buy and check out TextEdit on SL and see if the upgrade offers some features that will satisfy him.
Click to expand...

+1. Heck, the "shrink windows to icons in dock" thing alone makes it worth it to me. (That, plus Office 2008 finally works with Spaces! yay!)
 
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