What editors provide EE2 syntax highlighting in Windows?
Development and Programming
I have been using DW CS5 for a while and love the syntax coloring. It works great for PHP and HTML coding. I know that EE2 tags are not supported in CS5 (curly brace issue), so I am looking for a new editor for my EE2 sites. Since I am on Windows 7, Textmate, Coda and Espresso are not an option. I have looked at E-texteditor but it looks like development has stalled. Sublime Text 2 looks pretty decent and even has a EE2 bundle, but the program itself is still a beta and a bit buggy. I would really like to use Notepad++, but they have no EE2 user defined languages available for EE2 (there is an old one in the forums for EE1 http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/98164/).
I am not a programming expert in C+ by any means, so I am wondering if anyone has a good editor they can recommend for Windows that offers EE2 syntax highlighting and possibly even tag support? I would even be willing to contribute for a Notepad++ user defined language creation file if someone wanted to build it. I am sure we can get a few others to contribute as well to build Notepad++ into the ultimate EE2 dev tool. Auto-completion would be great as well if possible.
Any suggestions on a different EE2 Editor or on developing Notepad++ support?
Bryan
bgarrant,
I love Notepad++ but recently moved to Sublime Text 2 because of the code highlighting. I really like it though I do miss the lines connecting opening and closing tags that notepad++ has and the ability to fold tags (hide all code between opening and closing tag)
I did find an add-on for the lines, though it didn’t install properly. If you find another option with code highlighting for EE please share and I’ll definitely give it a shot.
Bryan, development may have stalled with etexteditor (I’m not sure if that’s actually the case) but it’s still a good wee editor and will do what you need.
Bryan, development may have stalled with etexteditor (I’m not sure if that’s actually the case) but it’s still a good wee editor and will do what you need.
I looked and see there has been no announcements since 2010 so that led me to believe it is not active. Notepad++ is just awesome and I wish we could get someone to make a language file for EE2. Maybe if we got a group of us all to contribute a couple bucks to a Notepad++ guru we could make this happen.
bgarrant, I love Notepad++ but recently moved to Sublime Text 2 because of the code highlighting. I really like it though I do miss the lines connecting opening and closing tags that notepad++ has and the ability to fold tags (hide all code between opening and closing tag) I did find an add-on for the lines, though it didn’t install properly. If you find another option with code highlighting for EE please share and I’ll definitely give it a shot.
I liked first glance at Sublime but then it crashed a few times and I gave up. Notepad++ is just so nice and clean. We should find someone to build out a language file for it. Does not look to hard but it is not my coding language unfortunately.
I have been using JeBrains PHP storm. Love it! Customizable and integrates with Github. http://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/?banner
Just curious, as a long time DW user, what exactly doesn’t work in CS5? I haven’t seen what you are talking about.
Regards,
Jim
Sorry - I should have stated that primarily all of my EE stuff is Mac based, I have a Windows box at work and if I’m on that then I use Etext.
SnippetPlus or Finger Text may help for making some easy to use snippets. I am afraid we will have no syntax highlighting though and be the same as DW CS5.
I have been using JeBrains PHP storm. Love it! Customizable and integrates with Github. http://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/?banner Just curious, as a long time DW user, what exactly doesn’t work in CS5? I haven’t seen what you are talking about. Regards, Jim
I can;t setup a tag library for EE2 as it will not allow the {} curly braces. I can setup snippets, but there is no color highlighting for EE2. I searched for a CS5 way to do this but had no success.
I have been using JeBrains PHP storm. Love it! Customizable and integrates with Github. http://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/?banner Just curious, as a long time DW user, what exactly doesn’t work in CS5? I haven’t seen what you are talking about. Regards, Jim
Does PHPStorm for a EE2 bundle?
Sorry - I should have stated that primarily all of my EE stuff is Mac based, I have a Windows box at work and if I’m on that then I use Etext.
I wish I could use a Mac at work but that is not possible. Windows is all we can use unfortunately.
I use Notepad++ and I basically just took the files from the other thread and I did a find and replace for “weblog” to “channel” and then saved them.
Of course there are still updates that need to be made - like removing trackbacks since they are no longer in EE2 as well as some other items (dynamic=”on|off” to dynamic=”yes|no”). But it’s a good start and you can easily customize both the EE.xml and EE.api file to fit your needs.
http://www.e-texteditor.com/ <- can use TextMate bundles (there are several for EE) .. this will probably work: https://bitbucket.org/jeremybise/expressionengine-2-bundle/downloads
Someone else mentioned phpStorm here .. I’m using it as well as I spend most of my time doing addon work (PHP) so code completion for EE tags is not that important to me.
I was able to get Notepad++ language file working but It still does not seem like a complete solution. I wish I could just get DW CS5 to recognize the EE syntax. I already have many snippets setup in DW and I like the code view a lot. It is just hard to debug since the EE code is all same color. Espresso looks awesome but no Windows port.