Fast, Unicode-capable, cross-platform programmer's text editor that shows invisibles like ZWSP?
- by Roger_S
Our publishing workflow includes Windows and Linux machines (there are some Macs too, but not in the critical-path workflow). Many texts include both English and Khmer and are marked-up in XML.
XML Copy Editor is the best cross-platform open-source XML editor I've discovered. It utilizes the Scintilla editing component, which is generally good with Unicode but which does not enable non-printing or invisible characters like U+200B (zero-width space) and U+200C (zero-width non-joiner) to be displayed. Khmer does not separate words with a space character as Western languages do, so ZWSP is used in electronic texts to enable applications to break lines easily.
Ideally I'd edit the markup and the content in a single editor, but XML awareness is less important at times than being able to display invisibles. (OpenOffice.org Writer and Microsoft Word are the only two apps I know that will display ZWSP. They are not suitable for the markup and text manipulations that need to be done to prepare manuscripts for publication, unfortunately, although I guess they're fine for authoring.)
I tried out a promising editor last week, but a search-and-replace regex operation that took under a second in TextPad 4.7.3 lasted over twenty seconds. So I want to mention that speed and the ability to handle large (up to 150mb) files is also a concern.
Is there a good, fast, free or not too expensive text editor, with versions on Windows and Linux and maybe mac too, Unicode-aware and capable of displaying invisibles like ZWSP? That has syntax highlighting, can handle large files and is customizable enough that I won't tear my hair out in frustration?
Thanks,
Roger_S
