C# Code Editor - recommendations [modified]
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Can anyone recommend a component, close or open-source (no GPL please), that has a decent editor to be embedded into an app? Cheers
modified on Friday, December 28, 2007 3:33:32 PM
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Can anyone recommend a component, close or open-source (no GPL please), that has a decent editor to be embedded into an app? Cheers
modified on Friday, December 28, 2007 3:33:32 PM
Actipro seems to be the defactor syntax editor for .NET applications. Syncfusion also have one I think. There is also a free one that was initially by Compona but is now called Fireball or something else, there's an article on it here. There's also ICSharpCode.TextEditor (from SharpDevelop) If you don't want fully managed libraries there was also a managed wrapper around Scintilla that's gone through several incarnations, I don't know what the status of that one is anymore.
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Actipro seems to be the defactor syntax editor for .NET applications. Syncfusion also have one I think. There is also a free one that was initially by Compona but is now called Fireball or something else, there's an article on it here. There's also ICSharpCode.TextEditor (from SharpDevelop) If you don't want fully managed libraries there was also a managed wrapper around Scintilla that's gone through several incarnations, I don't know what the status of that one is anymore.
Many thanks Ed, hope there is more to check out. From what I see Scintilla was a nice shot but remains to be well-supported etc. The managed wrapper I searched for got me to CodePlex (scintillanet) for people interested. The one done here is on sourceforge but I think it lacks features or under-developed as of late. So giving up on those two I checked out the Actipro vs Syncfusion and the latter seems to be cheaper and more heavy on ad machinery. But I appreciate the hint Actipro is the standard out there. Are there any others? Was just looking at VSX (and VS2008 route, sure it would give a huge feature set and virtually for free) but it is slightly an overkill as I just wanted Intellisense/code-completion and initially C# support (perhaps move on to other languages later). I guess it tells a lot where MS is going with dev tools and perhaps even XNA. Also that kind of VS 'hanging' complexity is bound to bring many bugs out in VS2008 SDK (and likely never to be available in Express editions) although I see it is available as open source to certain customers. SharpDevelop was always an option although I am not really sure about their licencing (recently changed to LGPL?).
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Many thanks Ed, hope there is more to check out. From what I see Scintilla was a nice shot but remains to be well-supported etc. The managed wrapper I searched for got me to CodePlex (scintillanet) for people interested. The one done here is on sourceforge but I think it lacks features or under-developed as of late. So giving up on those two I checked out the Actipro vs Syncfusion and the latter seems to be cheaper and more heavy on ad machinery. But I appreciate the hint Actipro is the standard out there. Are there any others? Was just looking at VSX (and VS2008 route, sure it would give a huge feature set and virtually for free) but it is slightly an overkill as I just wanted Intellisense/code-completion and initially C# support (perhaps move on to other languages later). I guess it tells a lot where MS is going with dev tools and perhaps even XNA. Also that kind of VS 'hanging' complexity is bound to bring many bugs out in VS2008 SDK (and likely never to be available in Express editions) although I see it is available as open source to certain customers. SharpDevelop was always an option although I am not really sure about their licencing (recently changed to LGPL?).
SharpDevelop is LGPL since 2005 (http://laputa.sharpdevelop.net/SharpDevelop2LicenseChangedToLGPL.aspx[^]). The text editor alone doesn't have C# code-completion, but you can use implement code-completion if you combine it with other SharpDevelop LGPL libraries. There is an example standalone C# editor with code completion in the SharpDevelop source code download.
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Many thanks Ed, hope there is more to check out. From what I see Scintilla was a nice shot but remains to be well-supported etc. The managed wrapper I searched for got me to CodePlex (scintillanet) for people interested. The one done here is on sourceforge but I think it lacks features or under-developed as of late. So giving up on those two I checked out the Actipro vs Syncfusion and the latter seems to be cheaper and more heavy on ad machinery. But I appreciate the hint Actipro is the standard out there. Are there any others? Was just looking at VSX (and VS2008 route, sure it would give a huge feature set and virtually for free) but it is slightly an overkill as I just wanted Intellisense/code-completion and initially C# support (perhaps move on to other languages later). I guess it tells a lot where MS is going with dev tools and perhaps even XNA. Also that kind of VS 'hanging' complexity is bound to bring many bugs out in VS2008 SDK (and likely never to be available in Express editions) although I see it is available as open source to certain customers. SharpDevelop was always an option although I am not really sure about their licencing (recently changed to LGPL?).
I would highly recommend Actipro's editor. If you are only looking for C# intellisense, then their control has it "built-in" with the .Net language add-on. So you could get up an running very quickly. Initially, (with version 3.x and earlier) they only provided the ability to show intellisense (e.g. it didn't do it for you). I think Synfusion still works this way. They also have the best support I've ever run into.
Take care, Tom ----------------------------------------------- Check out my blog at http://tjoe.wordpress.com
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I would highly recommend Actipro's editor. If you are only looking for C# intellisense, then their control has it "built-in" with the .Net language add-on. So you could get up an running very quickly. Initially, (with version 3.x and earlier) they only provided the ability to show intellisense (e.g. it didn't do it for you). I think Synfusion still works this way. They also have the best support I've ever run into.
Take care, Tom ----------------------------------------------- Check out my blog at http://tjoe.wordpress.com
Cheers for your input guys, they all look great for a start. Although I can see myself looking deeper at both of them later (requiring Intellisense and good editing experience as a starting point is just a side-effect), I'd like to initially just get it over with and move on to the problem domain. Thanks again.. (hope I don't see myself ending up looking along the lines of real-latent emergence of VBA SDK ,ie.once it became obsolete, equivalent in .NET :) Once you start with features and accepting requests for change, it becomes an unstoppable process)
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Many thanks Ed, hope there is more to check out. From what I see Scintilla was a nice shot but remains to be well-supported etc. The managed wrapper I searched for got me to CodePlex (scintillanet) for people interested. The one done here is on sourceforge but I think it lacks features or under-developed as of late. So giving up on those two I checked out the Actipro vs Syncfusion and the latter seems to be cheaper and more heavy on ad machinery. But I appreciate the hint Actipro is the standard out there. Are there any others? Was just looking at VSX (and VS2008 route, sure it would give a huge feature set and virtually for free) but it is slightly an overkill as I just wanted Intellisense/code-completion and initially C# support (perhaps move on to other languages later). I guess it tells a lot where MS is going with dev tools and perhaps even XNA. Also that kind of VS 'hanging' complexity is bound to bring many bugs out in VS2008 SDK (and likely never to be available in Express editions) although I see it is available as open source to certain customers. SharpDevelop was always an option although I am not really sure about their licencing (recently changed to LGPL?).
I've experienced coding against a trial of Actipro's and also an old version of Syncfusions and my preference would be Actipro if I had a project that could justify the cost. Don't know about VSX at all. I recently had a look at SharpDevelop's latest release and the whole thing seemed much easier to use than I remember although there is very little documentation for it so if you're stuck you have to ask on the forums or look at the source code. Actipro will have the benefit of many more examples, every example for #Develop points you to the #Develop code and this is just too big and abstract for many things.