IDE
IDE vs Text Editor
IDE is an Interactive Development Environment. Depending on your level of expertise, you may want to use a full IDE, or may be able to simply use an enhanced text editor that supports text highlighting.
Some IDEs are:
Wing IDE
Advantages:
Eclipse
Using Eclipse as a Maya IDE (rbublitz)
Making Eclipse Soar (Christian Akesson)
Instead of importing a folder into eclipse (which copies the files into c:\eclipse\workspace\...) you can instead create a linked folder which means that you can edit files on your regular file system. To do this, create a new folder, then when prompted, click "Advanced" and select the folder on your file system to link to. Sometimes you have to 'refresh' the list by r.clicking on the folder and selecting 'refresh'. (wiki.python.org)
making sure your command port is correct:
#script for eclipse maya plugin
import maya.cmds as cmds
if cmds.commandPort(':7720', q=True) !=1:
cmds.commandPort(n=':7720', eo = False, nr = True)
Python Development with Eclipse, Tutorial (Vogella)
Eclipse/PyDev Setup for Maya thread:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/python_inside_maya/DSPPaq3ftWo
Getting Eclipse to Indent Properly
Click on Window, then Preferences
In the “Preferences” dialog box which pops-up, traverse down the tree on the left to General > Keys
Click on the Modify Tab
Towards the bottom, change the “When” pulldown to “Editing Text”
Under the “Command” heading in the “Category” pull down, select “Edit”
Under the “Command” heading in the “Name” pull down, select “Shift Left”
Under the “Binding” heading in the “Name” pull down, enter the key combination in this box which you’d like to use to perform the action of moving a block of text to the left. I used Ctrl+Alt+[ (you will need to press the button combination for it to show up)
Repeat this process only using “Shift Right” for the Name pull down under “Command”, with a matching key sequent to use for the action
Click “OK” to finish
(devNulled)
Do not try to use 'Format Code'!
Also, have had indentation errors when using 'Tab' instead of my User-Defined hotkey or spaces, so be careful...
All My Tabs and Spacing Are Broken
Source --> Convert Tabs to SpaceTabs
How Do I Show Line Numbers?
It's important to have in mind that many preferences, such as print margin, show line number, background/foreground colors, etc. are inherited from the text-editor preferences at general > editors > text editors, and some other preferences are at general > appearance > colors and fonts – there's a link for both at the end of the preferences page.
(pydev.org)
Text Editors
jEdit
Crimson Editor