<http://forum.pspad.com/read.php?f=2&i=10651&t=10651> ----------------------------------------------------------------
Happy New Year everyone, First off, let me say that I'm very impressed with PSPad. Having built several C++ GUI apps, I can tell a lot of time has gone into it, and I appreciate the author's selfless efforts and the community's involvement to make it simply an amazing editor. I spent the past few days using and comparing PSPad with UltraEdit. I did so because the general concensus is that PSPad is the best free light weight editor, while UltraEdit is the best non-free one. To me it seems that PSPad actually has many more features than UltraEdit. I also think that parts of it are much easier to use than UltraEdit. Examples of this include: - middle click buttons close tabs - numerous context menus for tabs, status bar, etc. - access to exporer context menus - favourite files explorer - CTRL J and CTRL Space support - ALT key for column mode - built in diff tool (vs opening new app) - etc. Sure, UltraEdit has <some> features PSPad does not (eg: better diff tool, etc..) but overall, I think PSPad is actually ahead. Having said this, there were 3 main things I felt UltraEdit has going for it. - Its editor component is "clearer" / "easier on the eyes" (I'm using Windows 2K with a 21" Sony Trinitron monitor). I set the colours and font to exactly the same in both and found that the characters in UltraEdit were rendered cleaner and crisper. I have no idea why this would be the case as I thought Windows would generate the fonts, but it is indeed the case - perhaps because they are using a scintilla editor? Also, when scrolling the editor up or down, PSPad's screen refresh seems a bit slower. This is easily seen by trying to scroll before the beginning of a documetn or past the end of a document - it kinda "jumps". - UltraEdit has fully configurable toolbars, pannels, buttons, and menus. - UltraEdit menu command / configuration layout makes more sense. Things that apply to "Edit" belong under the Edit menu, things that you would expect to find uder the View menu, are under the view menu, etc. So, in general, UltraEdit is much easier to "configure" - especially for first time users - and for PSPad to be recocognized as THE best editor be it free or non-free, first impressions truly matter. - Last but not least, UltraEdit is very well "polished". All icons/gifs are very clean, dialog boxes are very easy to understand, configuration is easy, everything has a consistent colour/font/etc scheme and in general, the entire layout is VERY professional looking. I realize this is completely aesthetic differences and most can be very easily improved by appealing to graphic artists in the PSPad community... but I do feel it is critical to PSPad's future adoption. So again, thanks for all your efforts in creating this editor. I hope my comments might help to make it even better. Ignac -- PSPad freeware editor http://www.pspad.com
