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List of Text Editors and IDEs

Table of Contents

Introduction

This is a small, hand-maintained list of text editors and IDEs (Integrated Development Environments), useful for programmers and other developers.

Open Source Text Editors and IDEs

Cross-Platform Open Source Editors

  • Vim and gvim - a cross-platform vi-derivative editor (with many enhancments) with a Windows-conventions-emulating configuration (:source $VIMRUNTIME/mswin.vim). Has many plugins available on the site, supports Unicode and encodings, syntax highlighting, has both console and a GUI versions. Vim licence (open-source and GPL-compatible licence).

  • XEmacs - cross-platform Emacs derivative, with console and GUI versions. Is mostly written in and extendable with the built-in Emacs Lisp scripting language. Very hard to get used to from my experience. (GPLed).

  • gedit - a text-editor for the Gtk+/GNOME environment, with many plugins and extensions, and good unicode support. (GPLed)

  • geany - another Gtk+-based programmer’s editor. (Open-source, GPLed)

  • jEdit - a cross-platform programmer’s text editor written in Java, with many plugins. (Open-source, GPL 2.0).

  • Komodo Edit - a cross-platform text editor for dynamic programming languages from ActiveState. Also see Komodo IDE. (Open-source, MPL).

  • Kate - a programmer’s editor for KDE (the K Desktop Environment). As of this writing (January 2010), it crashes a lot on MS-Windows. Contains syntax highlighting, good support for Unicode and bi-directional scripts, and other features.

  • Bluefish - an open-source editor geared towards web-designers. (GPLed). Also see an LWN.net review of Bluefish 2.0.

Cross-Platform Open Source IDEs

  • Eclipse - an open-source IDE written in Java. Very comprehensive and contains intellisense, automated refactoring , code completion, and enhanced browsing tools for Java and other languages.

  • NetBeans - a Java IDE from Sun which uses SWING (and thus has a non-native and quirky look-and-feel) with good support for Java and support for other languages, including C and C++.

  • SharpDevelop and MonoDevelop - open-source IDEs for Microsoft .NET / Mono.

  • The Eric Python IDE - a “full featured Python and Ruby editor and IDE, written in Python”.

  • Padre, the Perl IDE - an open-source IDE written in Perl, and intended primarily for Perl development.

  • Lazarus, the Free Pascal IDE - an IDE written in the Free Pascal Compiler (FPC), and primarily intended for writing using it. Emulates Delphi, but allows cross-platform and cross-UI development. (open-source, GPL/LGPL and other licences).

  • Anjuta: the GNOME IDE - an IDE for the GNOME environment. (open-source, GPLed).

  • KDevelop - an IDE for the KDE desktop environment, written in Qt/C++ and primarily intended for C/C++. As of this writing (February, 2010), may have stability problems on Windows. (open-source, GPLed).

  • Code::Blocks - an IDE written in C++ (and primarily for it) using the wxWidgets toolkit. Runs on Windows, Linux/Unix, and Mac OS X and supports multiple compilers.

  • Leo - an IDE written in Python, using PyQt, for Python and other languages that takes the unusual approach of also integrating project management, a rendering engine, and a music and video player. (MIT licence).

Platform-specific Open Source Editors

  • Notepad++ - a free source code editor for Microsoft Windows with syntax highlighting, scripting and many extensions. (open-source, GPLed).

Non-Open-Source Text Editors and IDEs

Non Open-source (and probably platform-specific) Editors

  • Textpad - a proprietary programmer’s text editor for MS-Windows.

  • UltraEdit - a commercial, proprietary, text editor for MS-Windows, and x86-Linux.

  • BBEdit - a proprietary text editor for Mac OS X.

  • TextMate, E Text Editor and E Text Editor for Linux/UNIX - TextMate is a commercial (and not open source) programmer’s editor that has become popular on Mac OS X, and E Text Editor is a commercial version of it for Windows, with source available for compiling on Linux and other systems.

  • Coda - a proprietary and commercial text editor for Mac OS X, whose motto is “one-window web development” - i.e: put everything (text editor, file browser, web preview, etc.) in one window.

  • Sublime Text - a commercial text editor for Windows, x86 Linux and Mac OS X.

Non Open-source (and probably platform-specific) IDEs

  • Microsoft Visual Studio - the Microsoft IDE for Windows with support for C, C++ and .NET-based languages. (Proprietary and commercial.)

  • Embarcadero Delphi (formerly Borland Delphi) and C++Builder - Windows IDEs for Object Pascal and a variation of C++. (Proprietary and commercial.)

  • Wing IDE - a proprietary and cross-platform IDE for Python. (Proprietary and commercial.)

  • Komodo IDE - a proprietary and cross-platform IDE for dynamic languages, from ActiveState, based on the Mozilla platform. (Proprietary and commercial.) A free, open-source and limited version of it is available as Komodo Edit.

  • IntelliJ IDEA - a proprietary and commercial IDE for Java. Has an open-source version with more limited functionality.

Licence

Creative Commons License

This document is Copyright by Shlomi Fish, 2011, and is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 Unported (or at your option any later version of that licence).

For securing additional rights, please contact Shlomi Fish and see the explicit requirements that are being spelt from abiding by that licence.