Sory, I was looking through the topics and I wasn't sure if this was the best place to post this question:

I was wondering, out of curiosity, which software everyone was using to code their scripts in. I do mostly sh/ksh and my favorite has always been EditPlus because it is small, fast, yet powerful. Plus other users in the community have coded syntax highlighting for languages that EditPlus hasn't included.

My two main concerns are:
1. Simplicity (I tend to like souped up versions of notepad, which is what EditPlus seems to be).
2. Syntax highlighting.

I posted this because perhaps there's an even better program I should be using. Or perhaps someone has a very good syntax highlighting file that I haven't found yet.

i tend to stick to vi since it usually comes with the os build by default, it doesn't need an x-server to run and it can do what i need without a lot of overhead ...

while the syntax highlighting could be useful and could make my life more efficient when i'm coding --- it's not required ... and i don't want to get dependent on something that might not be there on the next system i'm working on ...

You can also use vim this is a buffed up version of vi you can get this to do Syntax highlighting. But i just stick with vi as well..

P

IMO any editor you use should have these features:
1. syntax highlighting for a variety of languages; allows creation of custom hightlighting
2. programmable (or macros)
3. support files from different platofrms (UX, DOS, etc)

vi meets some of those requirments, so it's okay in a pinch. I really like UltraEdit because it supports syntax highlighting for many dozens of languages/environments.
The bad part is it runs on Windows - I think there is an X version coming out, dunno.

I use vi about 99.9% of the time. The rest of the time is when I don't have a terminal open and I just pop Windows Notepad open for a quick note.

UltraEdit is a great editor but, as you said, it's Windows only. You can use the ftp save as but that is still not that great.

I prefer vi since it is just about on every Unix box that I've ever used and, once you get used to it, navigation and feature use is only a couple of keystokes away. A couple of features that are very handy are bookmarks, copy and paste buffers, launching a program and automatically reading its output into your text, lauching a program using your text as input. These will become second nature and you'll get going pretty fast. I kind of wish UltraEdit could switch on a vi mode once in awhile.

Thomas

Started with vi, but quickly migrated to emacs. I just find it more powerful and easier to use, especially through an X window.