Text Editors

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You can use any text editor that can save text files in UTF-8 for creating a source file for ConTeXt. Many editors provide generic TeX syntax highlighting, but some have even more support for ConTeXt.

Editor Features OSs Remarks
Atom CP LMW The new text editor for the kool kids, based on Electron. Good git client. Lots of plugins covering any editing task. Install plugins "language-context" and "pdf-view" for C and P.
Emacs with AUCTeX CT LMW Extremely powerful & highly configurable text editor for CTRL- and ALT- key lovers.
The official AUCTeX distribution beginning with 11.50 has ConTeXt support. Berend de Boers ConTeXt mode for Emacs has been merged with the former ConTeXt

support in AUCTeX by Patrick Gundlach. The AUCTeX page on this wiki has further AUCTeX customization for ConTeXt. If you write documents with bibliographies, indexes, or cross-references, you may also be interested in using Reftex.

There is also Emacs-muse which is an extension.
gedit L(M)W GNOME editor
jEdit LMW Cross-platform mature programmer's text editor. Good support for TeX and LilyPond among the rest.
Kate C L(MW) Kate is an advanced multi-document text editor for KDE. It has built-in LaTeX syntax highlighting, but you can install a [http://kde-files.org/content/show.php/ConTeXt+-+Syntax+Highlighting?content=54006 file that provides ConTeXt syntax

highlight].

nano L(MW) Curses-based text editor for Unix and Unix-like systems, designed to be a free replacement for the Pico text editor. Has basic TeX syntax highlighting.
Notepad++ 2 W Npp is one of the most powerful and useful text editors around. For Windows users (you can also use it under Wine) wanting a modern interface with loads of included features (see especially the TextFX menu), it deserves a close look.
Scite or Textadept CT L(M)W ConTeXt since v1.6.x. ConTeXt support files come with the ConTeXt distribution in directory context/data/context.properties. See also the manual mcite.pdf.
Smultron PTU M Shareware. Old configuration instructions.
TextMate C M The ConTeXt bundle is not in the distribution, but you can download a copy from GitHub.
TeXshop PT M Simple Cocoa IDE. Configuration instructions
TeXstudio PST LMW Extensive, memory-hungry TeX IDE
TeXWorks PT LMW Probably the most widespread TeX IDE, similar to TeXshop, supported by TUG.
TextPad CT W Commercial; TeX/ConTeXt/LaTeX command library; configurable to run a whatever-TeX command as a tool
Vim CT2 LMW Extremely powerful & highly configurable text editor. It operates in different "modes": you type in text in "insert mode" and pass commands to the editor in "normal mode." Whether you prefer Vim or emacs is a religious question of the highest importance.
WinEdt T W Shareware. A nice, configurable Windows editor for LaTeX. A large collection of buttons with Greek letters and other (math) symbols is very helpfulp when typesetting math. It also has spell checker. LaTeX users can also find many templates (tables, enumerations, ...) and compiling/previewing the documents by clicking a button. This is supported for ConTeXt also. You can configure it easily.

Features/OSs:

  • C = ConTeXt syntax highlighting (and perhaps command completion)
  • P = PDF preview
  • S = SyncTeX support (synchronising between text in PDF and TeX source)
  • T = ConTeXt typesetting
  • 2 = bidirectional editing (right-to-left)
  •  ? = previous feature probable but unsure
  • L = Linux
  • M = MacOS X
  • W = Windows

(Probably more editors have C and T.)