Saturday, September 12, 2009

Notepad++ plugins

My transformation is complete. I no longer use notepad ever. If on a machine I don't have notepad++ my first instinct is to install it. N++ in itself is very good but some of the plug-ins make it indispensable.

I had a simple problem for which I didn't have a good solution for a long time. I just wanted to be able to read xml in a well formatted way and be able to edit it in this form. Internet explorer did a reasonable job but it is not an editor. For a long time I used Visual Studio for pretty printing xml. It is like invoking power of attorney for getting a parking ticket but I didn't have a better solution. That is until I came across the XML plug-in for Notepad++. It is lightening fast and does more than pretty print xml. It validates the XML and if xml is not valid it gives a reasonable error.

Another plug-in that I regularly use is light explorer. This light weight plug-in shows the file system in a tree view on the left, almost like windows explorer. Having it inside the editor is awesome. It instantly turns N++ into a reasonable development environment.

I wish N++ had a vi editing mode but then may be it wouldn't remain as light weight and fast as it is so maybe that's for good. Unless… someone can implement a vi plug-in that is both lightweight and fast and still implements a reasonable subset of all the commands.

No comments:

Post a Comment