Text Editors

[ZhuHanuku]

I have a general question for interface authors as well as users. What program do you use to edit xml files? I know that WordPad is much more advanced than Notepad and I think it comes on all versions of Windows. From my limited experience, I [highly recommend] mistakenly recommended WordPad over Notepad. Is there anything better out there? Is it free (at least as in beer, if not speech)? Does it support xml highlighting?

The reason I'm asking is because users are having issues with my text/xml files. I know that Notepad blissfully ignores Unix-style newlines. I use gedit in Ubuntu and its highlighting feature really helps debug xml. It's available for Windows although I've never used it. I'd like to recommend something better than WordPad when people have issues.

[Brygard2007]

http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

I wouldn't use wordpad because of errors that can cause and also you have to remember to select Ansi format when saving and do not use wordwrap as well to avoid code errors.

Notepad is recomended to use over wordpad,least I recomended to use.

[hawkeye666]

For any coding for wihc I do not have a specific IDE I always use Notepad++. A distant second is notepad itself. Never use Wordpad.

[The Old One]

I also use Notepad++ for interface editing with my second being Dreamweaver CS5.

[artificeren]

Visual Studio 2010 Express is free. Pretty hard to beat it on Windows, in my opinion. Just get the web developer version of Express.

[artificeren]

Originally Posted by ZhuHanuku

I have a general question for interface authors as well as users. What program do you use to edit xml files? I know that WordPad is much more advanced than Notepad and I think it comes on all versions of Windows. From my limited experience, I highly recommend WordPad over Notepad. Is there anything better out there? Is it free (at least as in beer, if not speech)? Does it support xml highlighting?

The reason I'm asking is because users are having issues with my text/xml files. I know that Notepad blissfully ignores Unix-style newlines. I use gedit in Ubuntu and its highlighting feature really helps debug xml. It's available for Windows although I've never used it. I'd like to recommend something better than WordPad when people have issues.

Forgot to mention... Visual Studio covers every problem and feature you mention. Free, xml highlighting, handles nix newlines just fine, plus lots of goodies too many to count, like xml region collapsing, intellisense tag completion, etc. And the installer for the expression editions is so painless that anybody could do it.

[daimon]

Originally Posted by artificeren

Forgot to mention... Visual Studio covers every problem and feature you mention. Free, xml highlighting, handles nix newlines just fine, plus lots of goodies too many to count, like xml region collapsing, intellisense tag completion, etc. And the installer for the expression editions is so painless that anybody could do it.

pretty much same as Notepad++ .. guess it's a matter of preference hehe

[The Old One]

I have visual studio 2010 free from dreamspark (one of microsofts student discount programs) dut only use it for .net programing I had forgoten it could do xml nicely.

[ZhuHanuku]

Notepad++ looks excellent. I'll recommend it in the future. Visual Studio and Dreamweaver seem a little overboard but I guess if you already use them or like them, why not? Thanks for the suggestions!

Now all you LotROInterface peoples out there, get on it! No more Notepad or WordPad.