Overview Text Editors

When working with a variety of text files (HTML, CSV, YAML, XML, GeoJSON, JS, Python, Markdown), you need a replacement for the basic Notepad. A magnitude of options exists, such as Vim, Notepad++, PyCharm, Eclipse, Sublime. The last years my personal favourite has become Visual Studio Code. But let’s try to stay neutral and list what features we expect from a daily used text editor:

• Find in files (and replace) is an important feature when looking for a certain pattern in a folder of files.
• Syntax highlighting for xml, json, python and yml facilitate readability of the file
• Code formatting/validation. In Python and YAML indenting is essential, that’s when code formatting is extra important.
• A tree view of the project structure, so you can easily open files from the project
• Code completion/suggestions when you start typing

Optional features:

• Preview HTML & Markdown
• XML schema validation
• Git operations
• Content comparison, compare 2 (or more) files.

Many of the text editor communities have a range of plugins available to extend the functionality of the editor. Various text editors have for example a MapServer Mapfile or SLD plugin.