Looking for UltraEdit alternative

littlebigman · Post by **littlebigman** » Mon May 25, 2009 11:13 am

Hello,

I've been using UltraEdit for a few years, but I don't like the fact that it doesn't seem able to save all temporary files to a given directory, which makes it hard to re-open temporary files after a crash or I had to kill UltraEdit to restart Windows.

So... I'm looking for an alternative with the following features:
- Native Windows app
- Loads fast
- Saves all temporary files, in one directory (I like just copy/pasting text from the clipboard without saving each window into a file)
- Syntax highlighting (HTML, Python, Delphi, etc.)
- Shows list of open documents in left-hand list, Explorer style
- Good search/replace regex

Does Zeus fit the bill?

Thank you.

Post by **jussij** » Mon May 25, 2009 1:35 pm

I've been using UltraEdit for a few years, but I don't like the fact that it doesn't seem able to save all temporary files to a given directory, which makes it hard to re-open temporary files after a crash or I had to kill UltraEdit to restart Windows.

In the 15+ years that I have been running Zeus I can only remember ever losing one or two files due to a crash.

That is not to say that in all this time Zeus has never crashed, it most certainly has

But when Zeus crashes it generally does not terminate, which means that there is a good chance that one of the file save, file save as or file select all and copy to clipboard operations will recover the data in the file

Having said this, I don't think there is any excuse for software crashing and as far as I can tell Zeus DOES NOT crash on any sort of regular basis. It should be very stable.

- Native Windows app

Zeus is a stock standard Win32 windows application.

- Loads fast

Having never used Ultraedit I can answer this one. As far as I can tell Zeus seems to be fast loading.

NOTE: Zeus is not a very large file editor so files of the size of 100 mBytes or larger might feel slow loading.

- Saves all temporary files, in one directory (I like just copy/pasting text from the clipboard without saving each window into a file)

By default all file go to the zBackup folder. See the Options, Editor Options, Backup panel for other backup options.

- Syntax highlighting (HTML, Python, Delphi, etc.)

Baring configuration errors the syntax highlighting supports these languages.

Any errors can be easily fixed as the highlighting is fully configurable.

You can use the Options Document Types menu, Compiler panel to configure the error, warning and information details for any given file extension.

- Shows list of open documents in left-hand list, Explorer style

Zeus has a left hand drive navigator panel and also a left hand side files navigator panel.

You can also navigate to files using the file buffer dialog using the View Document List menu.

- Good search/replace regex

Zeus uses the Unix/Perl style of regular expressions.

Does Zeus fit the bill?

I would say it does

But Zeus does runs fully function for 45 days so it is quite easy for you to check out Zeus for yourself

http://www.zeusedit.com/download.html

Also if you find any of the information posted above to be incorrect or confusing, feel free to post any corrections or furthur questions to this thread.

Cheers Jussi

littlebigman · Post by **littlebigman** » Mon May 25, 2009 7:47 pm

jussij wrote:In the 15+ years that I have been running Zeus I can only remember ever losing one or two files due to a crash.

Sorry for the wrong expression: I meant that I often copy/paste text into unnamed files, and I like the fact that I can just kill the app without having to save each and everyone of them (eg. when Windows bothers me one time too many with its Update feature, and forces me to reboot) and expect the files to be reopened when I restart the app.

I'll check if Zeus supports this, as this is a must-have feature for me.

Thanks for the feedback.

Post by **jussij** » Mon May 25, 2009 11:16 pm

I meant that I often copy/paste text into unnamed files, and I like the fact that I can just kill the app without having to save each and everyone of them (eg. when Windows bothers me one time too many with its Update feature, and forces me to reboot) and expect the files to be reopened when I restart the app.

When you close Zeus it will ask you to save any unsaved files and any new unnamed files do fall into the category. So it will also prompt for a save on close.

But I also tend to have a lot of unnamed text files open and I have never found this too annoying.

In fact I understand how this can be very annoying. For example the File Save All functionality in Zeus used to save all the files and it this would result in a lot of these save as message boxes.

This annoyed me so much I change the save all to only save named files making it message box free

Cheers Jussi

Post by **jussij** » Fri Jun 05, 2009 12:33 am

I meant that I often copy/paste text into unnamed files, and I like the fact that I can just kill the app without having to save each and everyone of them.

For the next Zeus release there will be the following new keyboard functions:

WindowCloseAllNew
WindowCloseAllOutput

The WindowCloseAllNew function in particular will provide a way to close all the unnamed windows without being prompted with a request to save

Cheers Jussi