Ruby on Rails editors for Windows

So I’m still on Windows, developing in Rails. I’ve tasted a sample of Textmate, and from what I can tell, it’s undoubtedly the best editor I’ve used. I’ve been trying to find an editor similar, but for Windows. It’s a tough task, and while I’m aware that I won’t find one to match, I have found a couple that are close. Worthy of mention and in the order I prefer them, we have:

1. e
2. Intype
3. RoREd

e is the latest of my findings, and seems to be very, very good. Yesterday was my first full work day using it (along with today), and I didn’t come across one single problem. And it supports Textmate bundles. One feature I particularly like (I’m not sure if Textmate has this) is the ability to CTRL+HIGHLIGHT multiple places within a file, and replace or add text simultaneously. For instance, say you had a private method you were calling five times throughout your class, and you realized you needed to add another parameter. You could CTRL+CLICK/HIGHLIGHT all of the places you needed to insert it, and then start typing—it fills them all in at the same time. I wasn’t sure if this would be handy, but I’ve used it a few times already. So far, it’s the winner.

Intype is still in an ‘alpha’ state, so it’s lacking a project view. However, it seems to be promising. It supports the Textmate bundles as well, but there are still a few things that bother me (such as setting the Tab = 2 spaces and it resetting upon restart). Someone built a project view plugin for it, but here’s the issue: any time you execute a request in your app (or commit your code), all of the folders collapse. That’s really irritating; so much, in fact, I simply can’t use it right now.

RoREd doesn’t really compare to the other two. There are a few handy ideas, but they simply weren’t executed well enough. For instance, the ability to group your files according to the Rails implementation of MVC. If you open schools_controller.rb, whenever you open the model and/or any associated view, they will open as sub-tabs under the “Schools” button. And you can do things like “open all related files” (or just the views, model, helpers, etc.) It also has quick buttons to load the console, server (webrick/mongrel), or a simple command window (to quickly run generators or create migrations). But the bottom line is, it’s relatively buggy, and cheap-looking. Plus you have to define your own sippets, which means I won’t use them.

Even though the name is dumb, e is my editor of choice right now. It does some pretty cool stuff, and I like the built-in themes. I’ve tried plenty of other options, but nothing jumped out at me (the .NET-looking Rails editors give me terrible flashbacks). So that’s about the best a person can do for RoR development on Windows, in my opinion.