Finding the right text editor for your needs can be a frustrating experience. On a Windows machine, I swear by Notepad++, an app we reviewed last month, for it’s clever features and lightweight filesize. If I am ever installing programs on someone’s Mac, I will always suggest the inclusion of Smultron, an equally powerful editor with the all important price point: Free.
Smultron is designed to work perfectly for a whole variety of needs, including internet programming, script editing and to do lists. All socuments open within the application are ordered on the left hand sidebar, a la iTunes, enabling you to copy and paste code from one document to another without having to select different files from your dock. If that doesn’t work for you, configure the application to display them in tabs, it’s all down to the user.
All supported code is highlighted accordingly, giving you the ability to find and detect errors and keep your code annotated. Searches can be performed on words and line numbers, helping find the code you are looking for.
Smultron supports the previewing of HTML files directly inside the application and save pieces of text with a simple shortcut. Regular expressions, commands and scripts are all supported, as well as international encoding for non-english users.
The only down side I can see to using it is that it doesn’t currently support FTP transfers, something that would be a very useful feature for an app such as this. Other than that, all I can say is that it will help you infinitely with your coding, poetry, writing, it does what it needs to and it does it well.
