Smultron 3.5: Fast, Lightweight, Programmer's Editor

I've found text editors interesting since I first tried ed and ex on a DEC PDP 11/45 running UNIX, well, a long time ago. I've been pretty happy using TextWrangler and, more recently, Komodo Edit. However, I made a note early many months ago to take a look at...

Smultron 3.5

NOTE: TextWrangler, Komodo Edit, and Smultron are all free.

I finally got around to download, install, and try it about a week ago. I'm not doing much software development since I changed jobs this past summer. So, my text editor needs have been greatly simplified. Komodo Edit seemed like a bit more than my more modest current editing requirements. I like what I've seen so far in Smultron. And, to be honest, I probably used 0.01% of what Komodo Edit provides and maybe use 0.1% of what Smultron can do.

I took a look at some old PHP code to see what code looked like. Smultron's display is very similar to other editors. Syntax coloring can be modified if you don't like the default assignments. One thing I found I liked was having file/window labels going down the side. You can turn on horizontal tabs, if you prefer that. I think the reason I like the vertical sidebar of labels is because of the so-called widescreen display on my MacBook (and most current notebooks). We essentially lose vertical pixel count so that manufacturers (including Apple) can claim 13, 15, and 17 inch displays without using as much "glass" as the old LCD form factors. Since I have plenty of horizontal space on my MacBook but need to conserve vertical pixels, the labels on the side work well for me.

Smultron's preferences are simple but complete. I can't imagine I need more editor configuration that what it offers given the way I use text editors (think low-end needs). I think the only configuration item I changed was to Save As to the last Save As folder instead of defaulting to the Desktop.

Like most modern text editors, Smultron has a snippets feature to deal with frequently used text/code fragments. Since I spend all day blogging these days, the thing I do most frequently is add web references to my text. I created a simple snippet I call AREF and assigned it to the Fn-a key. You can see the snippet in the screen capture near this paragraph. Here's how it works. I highlight the text I want to link to a website. Then, I press FN-a. The snippet replaces the hightlighted text with the HTML tags and reinserts the text between the tags (where the %%s is in the snippet). My cursor is then placed in between the double quotes inside the tag (where the %%c is in the snippet). I can then just paste in the URL to complete the task.

Other text editors can do this too, of course. But, I've found I like Smultron's fast, simple, and lightweight nature. I'm going to keep using it for my blogging and lightweight programming work for the near future to see how it works out for me over a longer period.