Language-agnostic properly-tabbing code editors for Linux?

Question

I need a Linux text editor to replace Textpad 4.7.3 (a Windows nagware app), but all the alternatives I\'ve tried are either bloated or incomplete. Here are the features I find

Answer 1

I think you're making a serious mistake in being so extremely picky on how things should work. You will probably not find something which is exactly like TextPad in every single respect. You're missing out on some great functionality in some of the suggested text-editors.

One thing I've learned during my years using Emacs is the answer to the question "can you do X in Emacs" is always YES! (Of course, there are a few cornercases where this isn't true, but it is basically a good approximation of reality.) So, I realized that someone probably already has implemented a module for making Emacs more Windowsy (CUA-shortcuts, Ctrl-Tab, etc.) After googling on "windows keys in emacs", I found EmacsW32. It seems to have many of the features you're asking for:

• Regexp support: Yes
• Ctrl-Tab buffer switching: Yes
• Auto-indent: Yes
• Syntax highlighting: Yes
• "Smart navigation keys": Not directly, but this should be possible with a simple rebinding of the proper commands.
• Block select: Yes
• User-defined commands: Yes
• Jumping directly to compiler error locations: Yes, but if you're using a compiler with a non-standard error format, you may need to tweak the regexps used to extract error messages
• Workspaces: Yes (I think this included as a standard package nowadays)

And remember, Emacs has a big and active community with a lot of resources online, and a lot of people who are willing to help you customizing Emacs. If you're missing a feature in Emacs, chances are someone else has already implemented it!