Tools

Here are some recommended tools that Nucleus developers and plugin authors use.

EditPlus Text Editor - This is shareware, but still works normally after the 30 day period (nagware, really). Features syntax highlighting for HTML, CSS, PHP, ASP, Perl, C/C++, Java, JavaScript and VBScript. Also, it can be extended for other programming languages based on custom syntax files.

jEdit - Programmer's Text Editor - freeware, with syntax highlighting for every language you can imagine (more than one hundred, I think). The strongest point, though, are the plugins - there are a lot available, for every kind of task, and once you get used to some you can't live without jEdit anymore.

Notepad++ - freeware, with syntax highlighting for all the major programming languages. It uses tabs like Firefox, so you can tab between different files, rather than having a dozen different windows open. It is also smart enough to recognize indentation, so you don't have to keep tabbing/spacing every single line. Best of all, it recognizes code structures, so you can collapse and expand code sections to reduce scrolling.

TextPad - You can freely download it to try, but you must pay if you want to keep it (actually it does not enforce it). Features syntax highlighting for many languages including PHP and HTML, support unicode-UTF-ISO encoding, support Windows-UNIX-Mac text format, see the complete list of features. Also, it can be extended via add-ons.

NEdit - This is a Free Software under the GPL. It is designed for X Window systems (like UNIX or Linux) but you can make it work under Windows or Mac OS, provided that you have a X Window environment working on those systems. NEdit offers syntax highlighting, macros, tools integration. It can be combined with ctags (man ctags) which will allow to quickly jump where a function is defined to review its code. For PHP, you should look for this plug-in: PhpHighlightPlugin.