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What's the best text editor out there right now?
I really hate word. I just want something simple and elegant, that let's me focus on writing. And I've got a shiny clean new Mac Book with OS10.4 for this awesome text editor to go on.
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So, the main thing you have to consider is whether you are in the market for a word processor or a text editor (I get the feeling you didn't know there was a difference :-) ).
The advantage you get with text mate is superior manipulation of characters. Doesn't work so well (at all) with rich text.
I tend to write my documents that need richness as markdown documents, then I get the best of both worlds. There is nothing quite like typing a word and then pressing Cmd-Shift-Apple-L and having it be automatically linked to the first google result for that word. You can even auto-link it to a wikipedia document.
I use Textmate for Html, Ruby, Markdown, Erlang. Beyond that, I have it set as my EDITOR environment variable on the command line, so that every command that launches an editor uses TM.
If you are looking for a word processor though, I can't help. I haven't had the need in over a year.
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Inappropriate?TextMate.
I call it the Kimura of applications. There was none before Textmate, and there shall be none afterwards...
I’m happy
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Inappropriate?So, the main thing you have to consider is whether you are in the market for a word processor or a text editor (I get the feeling you didn't know there was a difference :-) ).
The advantage you get with text mate is superior manipulation of characters. Doesn't work so well (at all) with rich text.
I tend to write my documents that need richness as markdown documents, then I get the best of both worlds. There is nothing quite like typing a word and then pressing Cmd-Shift-Apple-L and having it be automatically linked to the first google result for that word. You can even auto-link it to a wikipedia document.
I use Textmate for Html, Ruby, Markdown, Erlang. Beyond that, I have it set as my EDITOR environment variable on the command line, so that every command that launches an editor uses TM.
If you are looking for a word processor though, I can't help. I haven't had the need in over a year.
5 people say
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Thanks for the clarification! In some ways I guess my issue is that most of what is available out there is too complex for what I need for just writing. If I could, I would just write on paper, but I want spell checking, grammar checking, finding and the speed of typing. But then the software has to catch up to paper with page numbers, saving, bold-ing. Maybe someday there will be personalized software!
I’m thankful
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Inappropriate?I've been using Google Docs and it is just fine for most of my needs now. No page numbers, and in general is minimalistic feature-wise, but it does the trick. Plus I can share my docs so easily without clogging other peoples' inboxes.
You might want to look at SubEthaEdit for collaborative document writing. This would be a great tool if there were several people taking notes at a meeting. They could create one canonic set of notes in real-time from multiple computers. Very cool indeed.
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this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Google products aren't really good experiences yet. I always feel a bit lost while using them, and it's straining trying to find tools in the web apps. I hope they keep getting better, I'm sure Veen and others are pushing. I'll check out SubEthaEdit too then!
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Inappropriate?Vim or emacs are i.m.o. the the most powerful but very difficult to learn.
Notepad++ is also one of the best and easy to learn.
Other good text editors are Crimson and Boxer.
