For the past few days i have been experimenting with text editors. I am currently using emacs on windows. it is definelty one of the best powerful editors, but it has its drawbacks too. simple features like line numbering and word wrap are not implemented too well in emacs. i know that setnu.el and linum.el does the line numbering and you can get the word wrap feature enabled in longlines mode. But they are not fluid enough. you can see check the visual interface to see what i mean. The core componenet of emacs is definetely powerful for text editing but where it lacks is the visual interface. i know a lot of techies who would not want a visual interface. But i would like to have both --> a good editor component as well as a visual interface. So i set out to find a replacement for emacs. these are my opinions on some editors i tried.
jedit:
+ open souce
customizable through plugin system
plugin manager
support for different languages
- too slow since it requires the JVM (the workarounds mentioned are not very usefull).
visual interface is not appealing - i would rather stick to emacs.
update: 27 nov 2009
I now have been using vi/vim and notepad++ regularly. over time i found that emacs was heavy and required a lot of customizations to work out of the box. for example - i tried to get the emacs browser thingy working without any success. i didn't like the elisp customization codes. elisp may be a powerfull language..blah blah, but for scripting purposes i humbly recommend ruby, python, perl or javascript. neverthless if you already know elisp then stick to emacs. but for someone to start fresh, i wouldn't really recommend it, in this era.
vim:
works better out of the box
available on almost anything (e.g. PuTTY)
better Microsoft windows integration.
smaller footprint.
and many more (google it)
notepad++:
works nicely in the windows environment
plugins available
visually appealing than both Vim and Emcas but unfortunately lacks the power of either.
small footprint and faster
