Textadept
Textadept is a cross-platform text editor for programmers, extensible through Lua scripting language.
I’ve used Textadept for a very short period of time but WebUpd8 reader Bruce Ingalls is using it for a while so below he will try to tell you his experience with Textadept.

I program on Mac, Windows & Linux-like systems. It is essential to find a text editor, that I can learn just once, and use on all of them. This editor must also be free/open, to allow the freedom of moving around. Perhaps this is why R. Stallman’s first free software was an editor.
I use Vi(m) for quick, small jobs, and Emacs, Eclipse, or Netbeans, if available. Vim & Emacs work well anywhere, but they are not user friendly. I started using Gtk based SciTE, but am disappointed that no native binary is available for Mac OSX.

DISADVANTAGES

TextAdept does not have pre-built binaries for Solaris, *BSD, Cygwin, or other less popular systems.
TextAdept leaves out SciTE’s extra visual components, such as tabbed documents, or editing preferences.
TextAdept, like SciTE, does not work in a text console, so you’ll still want vim, emacs, pico, or nedit.
You cannot save preferences, and help is minimal, only on the web.
If you already know that Ctrl-space completes a word, then you likely don’t need help.
Still, there are hidden gems, such as Alt-o, to load the recent file list.
Here, I (Andrew) would also like to add that Textadept is a bit difficult to configure as you must go through configuration files if you want to change the font or theme for instance. For info on this, see the Textadept manual page.

ADVANTAGES

TextAdept is fast & light! TextAdept alone is only about 1M. (Standard Gtk libs add about 15M)
With a single C file, TextAdept compiles easily, once you have the Gtk v2.x development files (*.h headers).
TextAdept supports the essentialls of the Gnome HIG Human Interface Guidelines. This means that the keybindings you are familiar with on MS, Mac & Linux will generally work. This includes Ctl-x to cut, Ctl-tab to switch open files, and Ctl-q to quit.
Minimal design maximizes screen real estate. Great for netbooks!
TextAdept has text editing essentials, with syntax coloring.

Tags: