SlickEdit

SlickEdit began in 1988 as a character-mode editor for DOS and OS/2. Clark Maurer, currently CEO of SlickEdit Inc. (formerly MicroEdge Inc.), was employed at IBM's Watson research lab. He was the developer of the internal IBM editor E; the most popular internal program used at IBM at the time. This experience enabled him to quit IBM and begin development of the first SlickEdit releases.[1]

At the beginning of the '90s, most DOS editors were struggling with limitations of the 16-bit address space or DOS memory handling (640k). SlickEdit's programmers found a way to overcome these limitations. SlickEdit's current version can now handle large files of up to 2 TB in size.

As operating systems with graphical user interfaces became more popular, SlickEdit continued to produce versions of the program with high functionality and good usability. Today SlickEdit is feature rich in C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, PHP, HTML, Objective-C, Groovy, Google Go, and many more. SlickEdit can be used for everything from Web Development, IOS Development, Android software development, and Desktop Development to Mainframe Development. SlickEdit supports debugging for GNU C/C++, Java, WinDbg, Groovy, Google Go, Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, Xcode, and Android JVM/NDK.

SlickEdit supports over 70 programming languages and file types,[2] including C, C++, C#, Groovy (programming language), Java, JavaScript, Objective-C, Go, HTML, PHP, XML, Windows batch files, AWK, Makefiles and INI files. Some of these are only supported with syntax highlighting, such as Makefiles and INI files. Like most other code editors, SlickEdit allows the user to add support for additional languages and to modify the way it operates on the ones listed above. SlickEdit also supports opening Visual Studio solutions and Xcode projects as workspaces.

SlickEdit supports at least 76 different encodings[2] and runs on seven operating systems:[3]

• AIX
• HP-UX
• Linux
• macOS[4]
• Microsoft Windows
• Solaris (SPARC and x86)

The 32-bit Linux SlickEdit binary can also run on a FreeBSD system which is configured for Linux binary compatibility, although this is not a supported configuration.

Until version 4.0b, SlickEdit supported the OS/2 operating system.

Slick-C is the proprietary scripting language of the editor. Much of the editor is actually written in Slick-C, and all the Slick-C source code is included with the product. This means that the user can look at how things work and modify the behavior to suit their needs.

As the name suggests, the language resembles C, though it has some elements from REXX (parse, substr, ...). The original author of Slick-C liked the string parsing features of REXX and added similar features to Slick-C .

In addition to direct support for customers, SlickEdit also hosts a web forum where users can help one another.[5]

In a review of version 11 of SlickEdit, released in 2006, Tom Plunket reviewing it for the Game Developer, suggested that it suffers from an overabundance of features:

SlickEdit ends up being a very complex piece of software. Some of its most promising features are hard to use, and configuring the program to work to any one developer's tastes can be tedious... its power can only be harnessed by people who are ready to spend considerable time learning how to truly use it.[6]

In 2012, Shawn Powers also reviewed the software for the Linux Journal, concluding that it "is an amazing tool".[7]

• SlickEdit Plug-In: Integrates the SlickEdit editor for use in the Eclipse IDE.[8]

• List of text editors
• Comparison of text editors

• Ayers, Larry (June 2000). "Visual SlickEdit 5.0". Linux Journal. Seattle, WA, USA: Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. 2000 (74es). ISSN 1075-3583.

• Official website