For a long time I’ve been using PSPad which is a very good free text editor for Microsoft Windows. I’ve always known about NotePad++ which has always been a great text editor (and its open source). However, I’ve never been able to fully justify the switch from PSPad to NotePad++.That is until I started Ruby on Rails development and got a case of Mac envy watching all the screencasts with TextMate and the really nice Railcasts theme. It seems the Ruby on Rails community is full of Mac users — well at least the helpful people that write the tutorials and screencasts anyway.
What I wanted was the really simple interface, theme and explorer you get with TextMate. I just had two conditions:
- I didn’t want to switch to a Mac. We’re not all made of money. Although I hear you can power a Mac with your own sense of self-satisfaction
- I wasn’t going to switch to a paid editor (at least not without exploring the free/open source alternatives first) like eTextEditor or Sublime Editor. Something open source would be good too.
The solution came pretty quickly as soon as I found out you can convert TextMate themes to NotePad++ themes. Another great feature is the plugins manager which makes it easy to install a number of really useful plugins.
Here’s how my NotePad++ now looks running on Windows 7 (Consolas font) using the Railscast theme and Explorer plugin:
I know, I know, no TextMate bundles but hey, you can’t have it all, and I’m just a wannabe Mac fan boy anyway. Also I wish they would hurry up and update the NotePad++ icon. It looks like something that survived from Windows 95 
Haha. Been using Notepad++ for a couple of years at work now but never bothered looking into how to extend it. The above theme is quite attractive, but I don’t code in Ruby, only PHP/CSS/XHTML and a bit of JavaScript.
I do, however, have a MacBook at home, and I’ve just taken over the duties of maintaining our choir’s web site (www.oriana.org.au). I’ve uploaded the legacy site as is for the time being until I’ve had a chance to redo it a bit, so don’t hold it against me
I’ll have to look into TextMate after your glowing review.
Comment by Ben — March 17, 2010 #
Yep, Notepad++ is my editor of choice too. Like the idea of plugins and themes. Might check that out if I can be bothered.
Comment by Lindsey — March 17, 2010 #
Right then, so I’m extremely late on the bandwagon, and what sold me was the aesthetics anyway…. interesting.
Comment by praj — March 17, 2010 #
Photo doesn’t show , but I’d love a copy of the style.xml if you can email it to me.
Comment by Mark — February 12, 2011 #
NM – can’t edit comment. Went to http://railscasts.com/about and downloaded the TM theme from the source and ran it through. Thanks for the link!
Comment by Mark — February 12, 2011 #
You can have an unlimited time of evaluation in Sublime Text. This means practically you don’t have to pay for it.
This is a smart move, you rarely find Sublime Text on torrents and if you do, you will have to install a cracked exe, which is surely a virus bomb.
Comment by karatedog — November 15, 2011 #