Any xml editors to recommend?

[Martin Gühmann]

The thread title should say it, if there are any advanced xml editors to recomment, beside EditPlus2 with xml syntax highlighting (of course syntax highlighting for Python as well).

-Martin

[Peter Triggs]

There's tons of free XML editors floating around.

Currently I'm using XMLSpy (which is what the developers used). You can get it at:

http://www.altova.com/products_ide.html

BTW, it comes in English and German versions.

The only downside is that when you start it up you get offered a temporary free trial of some features that are only available on the pay-for version. But this only lasts for a month (I hope).

[LDiCesare]

Even vim has syntax highlighting. Either you cannot stand vi or you love vim.

[Gramphos]

If someone suggests vi, I feel obligated to suggest emacs. It has great syntax hilighting options.

[LDiCesare]

If someone suggests vi, I feel obligated to suggest emacs.

I was sure someone would answer that . Of course, both vi and emacs are always good options for just about any text editing.

[Gramphos]

Well, I don't like using the escape key as mush as you have to in vi.

[PJayTycy]

xin editor

xml spy would be the best if it was free.


The other editors have syntax highlighting, but no automatic xml-valid checks. But, I don't know if civ4 uses a .dtd to accompany the .xml files.

[Locutus]

I surprisingly find myself continuing to use EditPlus. Yeah, there are all kinds of powerful XML editors out there with some neat tools, but none (at least no free/cheap ones that I found) beat EditPlus when it comes to search tools, which is frankly the most important thing when modding on such a large and diverse collection of data. The fact that it supports external tools and macros so well and can simultaneously be used for Python scripts (and at least inspecting C++ code) are all great bonuses of course. I'm currently trying XML Starlet as command line toolkit to allow me to do validating and stuff in Editplus, but it's too early to tell how happy I am with it or if there's something better out there.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by PJayTycy
The other editors have syntax highlighting, but no automatic xml-valid checks. But, I don't know if civ4 uses a .dtd to accompany the .xml files.

No

[Locutus]

Originally posted by PJayTycy
xml spy would be the best if it was free.

There is a free Home Edition, actually. Not bad, but it lacks any advanced features of course (not sure how it compares to the commercial version, it's a bit above my price range so I've never used it).

[Peter Triggs]

That's the one I'm trying out. It still seems to have way more functionality than I'm ever going to need to edit CIV's files.

[MattPilot]

I went to google.com and searched for "free XML editor"

I got the 100% free program called Cooktop.

http://www.xmlcooktop.com/

Works great.

[PJayTycy]

Originally posted by Locutus
No (about .dtd files)

well, then all those special xml editors like Xin, xmlspy and cooktop (thanks for the link, btw) don't have any added value over editplus' syntax-highlighting.

[Locutus]

Well, there's still well-formedness validation and some other XML specific tools like auto-completion, different methods and formats of syntax highlighting, reformatting, etc. As far as pure XML editing goes, Editplus does a relatively poor job compared to pure XML editors (it's by no means bad but it's less good) but it has some additional features that most XML editors lack, such as the search tools, unlimited undo buffer, project management, macros, support for countless other languages, great UI, external tools (whiich allows you to add all those XML-specific features that EditPlus doesn't have natively, and more), etc.

And then of course there are concerns like resource consumption, stability, customisation, licencing, cost, etc -- I don't think any one editor wins in more than one category there.

But yeah, in the end all these tools are pretty similar and it really boils down to personal taste. I would recommend everyone to just try a couple of editors (both native XML ones like XML Spy and more generic text editors like EditPlus) and stick with what they like best -- that's what I did. But as a 7 year very satisfied veteran of EditPlus it'll take some convincing to get me off of it (although I've switched to Eclipse for 'serious' programming, but I still use EditPlus for all my scripting, XML/HTML coding, plain text editing and most of my local machine searching)