As a bit of a new comer to Rails development and an avid fan of the Apple Mac I have settled on using Textmate as my editor of choice when developing for Rails.
But what about when you are developing on Microsoft’s Windows platform. Well after playing around with a few editors I found Notepad++ which has some remarkable similarity’s to Textmate for Apple.
The best part about Notepad++ is it’s free and it’s also open source, however you can give donations as it started and developed by Don Ho and a small group of developers. I didn’t spend a lot of time using Notepad++ mainly because I spend most of my time on a Mac however I did enjoy using it as a Ruby on Rails editor for Windows. The only thing I didn’t see was a project window which you could import your Rails project framework into for easy access.
Notepad++ has full code highlighting, use defined language including Ruby, zoom in and out, and alot more.
A great editor and well worth further investigation.
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
I use Notepad++ all the time for rails dev on windows.
One problem, there is no rhtml syntax highlighting. You can create your own custom language syntax highlighting. Pretty handy, also time consuming.
One of the major drawbacks I faced while using Notepad++ was that it wasnt capable of integrating with the ruby compiler.
If u have found out a way do let me know !
~rd
notepad++ is nice … I love it … if you want to compile ruby you must use Run function (F5).
You could also try jedit if you want a little bit easy … especially for directory browse.
“The only thing I didn’t see was a project window which you could import your Rails project framework into for easy access.”
There is a button called “Light Explorer” at toolbar, third one at the end. You can use that button to see your framework or folders.
When i first begin to the rails, simply i searched at ruby forums for a text editor and may be an IDE, i have found several IDEs, text editors etc… I downloaded every single of them.
And i choosed to use Notepad++. I have to say that, beginners must not use an IDE, firstly it is confusing, there are a lot of buttons with unknown meanings-features. If a beginner use an IDE, he/she can give a lot of time to understand that IDE, may be after 1-2 months of rails training, IDEs can be used but not for beginning, i seriously not recommend to use an IDE for rails first.
You already listed some features of notepad++. I can’t add more.
In textmate even a simple .yml file can be highlighted but in notepad++ it cant be, anyway if you know where to look at, this wouldnt be a problem. If i dont use notepad++ for rails, i may use e-texteditor on windows. It is so close to textmate but it is shareware and price is not for one time.
Conclusion : Notepad++ is the an excellent choice for rails on windows.