UltraEdit: The world's best text editor. Our 4+ million power users all agree – UltraEdit is the most flexible, powerful, and secure text editor out there. Download a free, full-feature trial to see why. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. With UltraEdit you have the option to properly format XML content: View View as (Highlighting file type) XML. Which changes the coloring so that tags, attributes and content are better readable. Then you can do: Format XML Convert to CR/LFs. So that line breaks are appropriately applied. What I am missing is proper indentation. Get the answer to 'What is the best alternative to UltraEdit?' See a list of the top 20 options and learn their pros and cons. The Slant team built an AI & it's awesome Find the best product instantly. Add to Chrome Add to Edge Add to Firefox Add to Opera Add to Brave Add to Safari. User-friendly Interface and Layout UltraEdit for Linux (UEx) is designed to give you the native feel of your operating system of choice, without sacrificing the knowledge you've gained in using UltraEdit on Windows. So, if you're a Windows user who has made the jump to Linux or Mac, UEx will seem very familiar. UltraEdit for Linux maintains the interface, configuration conventions.
I have been dabbling with Apache Thrift the last couple of days, both on Windows and in Ubuntu Linux. If you are anything like me you will find the Thrift documentation lacking to say the least and that's why I'm publishing this text and more will probably follow. I give you no guarantee that this will work for you as it did for me but it might give you a hint on how to solve your issues.
At the time of writing Thrift is not included in any of the standard Ubuntu package repositories and I was not able to find it in a launchpad ppa either. Finally I got the source from the Apache Subversion repository and started to look at the build instructions. Making a long story short, the prerequisites for compiling it are HUGE. This is actually a good thing since it comes from support in a big variety of programing languages. I just needed Python for my experiments and the Thrift compiler is built in C and CPP but I couldn't get it to compile properly with just that no matter how I tried to disable the other features. So I had to take a Google moment and collect my thoughts….
After some searching I came upon a issue in Thrifts bug tracker, https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/THRIFT-71. What this says is that in December -10 someone committed the 'debian' folder necessary to build proper .deb packages to the source code. One small issue though, you can find it inside the .contrib/ folder and not in the root folder as usual, otherwise I would have spotted it when trying to compile. It was also accompanied with a small shell script that linked this ./contrib/debian folder to the required ./debian path. This made life a lot easier since all dependencies and other stuff were given but… I really didn't need or wanted all of those dependencies needed to build the packages installed on my system just to try it's Python code out, what to do…?
On to the scene steps something called pbuilder which you can find the details about in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide/. What it does is basically provide a chrooted environment on your computer where debian packages will be built without messing with your normal installation.
The following instructions will install the things necessary to get pbuilder and to build the thrift packages and later install them. Be warned though, it will take some time to do since pbuilder basically installs a minimal Ubuntu environment in a chroot.
First pbuilder, set up for building maverick compatible debs:
This will give you a pbuilder environment ready to do some work… but what work?
…Thrift…
- Download Thrift from http://thrift.apache.org/download/ and put it in your home folder. At the time of writing it was version 0.6.0
- Wait…
- If all goes well you should now have a bunch of .deb files in ~/pbuilder/result. Install them as usual or with dpkg -i .deb
for example…
This worked for me to get up and running with Thrift on Ubuntu. Hopefully it will be good use for someone else as well.
UltraEdit for Linux is extremely buggy and corrupts the text documents. The corruption happens with using column mode, possibly worsened by using split windows (I mostly use vertically split). Column mode has always been buggy in UltraEdit, but in the Linux version it is extreme.
Also, it doesn't like emojis at all (coming from, say, copy-pasting from a Twitter profile) and will simply delete all text (or corrupt text, crash, or freeze) if an emoji character is deleted… (there is no way in UltraEdit for Linux to remove emoji characters without also losing content).
UltraEdit for Linux also lacks behind the Windows version (as of early 2020 at version 18, 2018). Note that I am a veteran user of UltraEdit (since 1998), and it works fine on Windows (except for occasional problems with column mode).
UltraEdit for Linux version 20 was released 2020-06-26. I haven't had a chance yet to review it, in particular if the bugs have been fixed.
An alternative is Geany, and it is similar to Notepad++ on Windows. But Geany is not nearly as clunky as Notepad++.
This blog post is intended to be step-by-step instructions for quickly getting up and running with Geany on a new system. It also covers missing features in Geany. Though the focus is on Linux, the instructions also cover Windows.
Installation
Ubuntu/Debian, from the terminal
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install geany
For Windows, use the EXE installer. Note that in order to use the English version on a non-English version of Windows, the environment variable 'LANG' must set to 'en'. As this may affect other things, the easiest is to make a BAT file that sets the environment variable and launches Geany (so the change is only for Geany).
Some basic plugins
To get a menu item for copying the full path of the current document to the clipboard, install the plugin with the generic name 'Addons'. The following is for Ubuntu/Debian from the command line.
First list the available plugins:
lsb_release -a # List Ubuntu version
apt-cache search geany
Note that some plugins are not available in later versions of Ubuntu. For example, the Geany plugin 'Debugger' is available in Ubuntu Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus), but not in Ubuntu 19.10 (Eoan Ermine) (on Ubuntu 16.04, the output includes 'geany-plugin-debugger – debugger plugin for Geany').
It should include:
geany-plugin-addons - miscellaneous plugins for Geany
Install 'Addons', using the exact name from above:
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sudo apt install geany-plugin-addons
Enable the plugin 'Addons' in the Plugin Manager, menu Tools → Plugin Manager. After this, there is a new menu command, menu Tools → Copy File Path. Note that it is available immediately; there isn't any need to restart Geany.
For Windows, use the EXE plugin installer. It will install a number of plugins, including 'Addons'.
Change theme, e.g. to a dark mode one
Similar to UltraEdit, it is possible to use dark mode. It is, however, not enabled by default in older versions of Geany – extra files must be added to the installation (it is enabled with Geany 1.37.1 on Windows).
Download a set of themesfrom GitHub, uncompress the ZIP file, and copy the content of folder 'colorschemes' to folder ~/.config/geany/colorschemes (about 35 files). On Windows, copy to folder %ProgramFiles(x86)%/geany/colorschemes (e.g., C:Program Files (x86)Geanydatacolorschemes).
Change the theme: menu View → Change Colour Scheme… → choose 'Delt Dark' → press 'Close'.
Alternative dark themes are: 'Himbeere', 'InkPot', 'Kugel', 'Relesk's MC' (darkblue background), 'Monokai', 'Oblivion 2', 'Railcasts 2', 'Retro' (green text), 'Sleepy Pastel', 'Solarized (dark)', 'Spyder Dark', 'Steampunk', 'Tango', 'Tinge', 'Vibrant', and 'Zenburn'.
'Vibrant' is probably the closest to the UltraEdit one.
Open .txt files with Geany by default
In Ubuntu, .txt files open in the extremely irritating 'Text Editor' (why did they have to change how Ctrl + F works??).
Right click on some .txt file in a 'Files' window (or Ctrl + I) and choose 'Properties'. In tab 'Open With' (the last one), find 'Geany' in one of the three lists, select it and press 'Set as default'. Close the dialog.
Turn off various non-text panels
Menu View → Show Message Window, to not checked.
Menu View → Show Toolbar, to not checked.
Menu View → Show Sidebar, to not checked.
Set font size
Menu View → Change Font…, to 18. The font, 'Monospace Regular', is OK ('Monospace Normal' on Windows).
Note that there is a separate zoom level. It works in the same way as in a web browser (e.g., Ctrl + + to zoom in).
Turn off everything with TABs
No more TABs! They are evil.
Menu Edit → Preferences → Editor → Indentation → Type. Set to 'Spaces'.
Menu Edit → Preferences → Editor → Indentation → Tab key indents. Uncheck.
Note: It works only for documents opened after this change (not current ones), so the easiest way is probably to restart Geany.
Changing keyboard shortcuts to the same as in UltraEdit
So they are the same as in UltraEdit. This is also important for using a macro keyboard (no need for duplication).
The keyboard shortcuts are changed in menu Edit → Preferences (which itself has keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + P – but it conflicts with the Cinnamon applet 'Color Picker'…) → Keybindings
Close document (Ctrl + F4)
E.g., so a macro keyboard works the same.
Item 'Close' in section 'File'.
(Original keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + W)
Find next (F3)
E.g. so a macro keyboard works the same.
Item 'Find Next' in section 'Search' (about 40% way down).
(Original keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + G)
Find previous (Ctrl + F3)
E.g. so a macro keyboard works the same.
Item 'Find Previous' in section 'Search' (about 40% way down).
(Original keyboard shortcut: Shift + Ctrl + G)
Set bookmark (Ctrl + F2)
E.g. so a macro keyboard works the same.
Item 'Toggle Marker' in section 'Go to' (about half way down).
Note that the Ctrl key is listed as 'Primary'.
(Original keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + M)
Next bookmark (F2)
E.g. so a macro keyboard works the same.
Item 'Go to Next Marker' in section 'Go to' (about half way down).
Note that the Ctrl key is listed as 'Primary'.
Press 'Override' to remove the existing keyboard shortcut for 'Switch to Editor'.
(Original keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + .)
Previous bookmark (Alt + F2)
E.g. so a macro keyboard works the same.
Preparation: Ubuntu (and variants like Ubuntu MATE) may already use this keyboard shortcut.
In Ubuntu, disable the keyboard shortcut for 'Key to execute a command' by installing and using CompizConfig Settings Manager. Note that it may not be that easy to do – for the linked-to solution it worked for me on Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus), but not Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver).
In Ubuntu MATE (much easier): Window key → 'k' → select 'Keyboard Shortcuts'. In section 'Desktop' (second section), double click 'Show the panel's ‘Run Application' dialog box' and press backspace (to clear it). It takes effect immediately; there is no need to restart anything.
In Cinnamon: Window key → 'sys' → select 'System Settings'. In section 'Hardware' (third section), open 'Keyboard'. In tab 'Shortcuts', click 'General' (left panel) → click on 'Run dialog' on the right → select and single click on 'Alt + F2' (will display 'Pick an accelerator') in the lower half ('Keyboard bindings') → press Backspace (to delete/clear the shortcut). It takes effect immediately; there is no need to restart anything.
In Geany's preferences, Keybindings, set Alt + F2 for item 'Go to Previous Marker' in section 'Go to' (about half way down).
(Original keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + ,)
Insert date (Alt + 2)
User defined as text template '2' in UltraEdit.
Studies – flashcards for serious students 1 1 4. Example: 2020-03-29
But this conflicts with selecting a tab (the second tab in this case) and using combinations of Ctrl, Shift and Alt conflicts with the Geany plugin 'Numbered Bookmarks'. A workaround is to create a text template with the name '_2' and content '{command:date +'%Y-%m-%d'}'. Then the date is inserted by typing '_2' followed by TAB.
Insert date and time (Alt + 3)
Change keyboard shortcut:
In menu Edit → Preferences → Keybindings → sub section Insert → Insert date: Change to Alt + 3 (from the default Shift + Alt + D)
User defined as text template '3' in UltraEdit.
Example: 2020-03-29T144457
Note that this overrides selecting the third tab with Alt + 3…
(Original keyboard shortcut: Shift + Alt + D)
Go to line (Ctrl + G)
Item 'Go to Line' in section 'Go to' (about half way down).
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Note that the Ctrl key is listed as 'Primary'.
(Original keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + L)
Trim trailing spaces (Shift + F12)
Note: A keyboard shortcut was not added until version 1.34 (2018-12-16). Thus the default installed version of Geany on Ubuntu 16.04 (version 1.27, 2016-04-17) and Ubuntu 18.04 (version 1.32, 2017-11-19) does not have it… Ubuntu 19.10 has version 1.35, 2019-04-28. Brave browser 80 1 4 96 full.
Item 'Strip Trailing Spaces' in section 'Document' (about 3/4 way down).
If it is not available, an alternative is to use the implicit Alt + D, S keyboard shortcut.
More keyboard shortcuts
Physical navigation of tabs
We want physical navigation of tabs with Ctrl + Tab (to the right) and Shift + Ctrl + Tab (to the left), like it is possible in Firefox (with unchecking of option 'Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order'). Or in other words, we want the same keyboard shortcuts for this navigation in both Firefox and Geany, so we can easily use a macro keyboard (no need to use modifier keys for this very very common action).
There isn't any setting for that in Geany, but there are actions for both kinds of navigation (with associated keyboard shortcuts):
Switch to left document
Switch to right document
Switch to last used document
In Geany's preferences, Keybindings, section 'Notebook tab' (near the end):
Clear the keyboard shortcut item 'Switch to last used document' by double clicking and pressing OK (without pressing any keyboard shortcut). (Original keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Tab.)
Set 'Switch to left document' to Shift + Ctrl + Tab (original keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Page_Up).
Set 'Switch to right document' to Ctrl + Tab (original keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Page_Down).
Templates
In Geany, they are called 'snippets' (templates mean something else in Geany).
Edit file snippets.conf, from menu Tools → Configuration Files → snippets.conf. Add to the '[Default]' or '[None]' section.
Example: XXXX
And we can assign a keyboard shortcut, like in UltraEdit, in section '[Keybindings]' (but even then, Ctrl + 0 does not work – it could be a similar shortcut to the one in UltraEdit where we have used Alt + 0):
_0=9
Insert date
Change the format of the template function XYZ: Menu Edit → Preferences (Ctrl + Alt + P) → Templates → Date, to '%Y-%m-%d'
Insert date and date/time
This is a built-in function in Geany:
Change format:
Menu Edit → Insert Date → Set Custom Data Format, to '%Y-%m-%dT%H%M%S'.
Usage (see above for changing the keyboard shortcut): Menu Edit → Insert Data → Use Custom Data Format.
It can also be done with templates (like in UltraEdit). Setting:
Menu Edit → Preferences (Ctrl + Alt + P) → Templates → Date & Time, to '%Y-%m-%dT%H%M%S'.
Bookmarks
Persistent bookmarks
Geany does not remember bookmarks by default, making them pretty much useless. What is the point of bookmarks if they are not saved across sessions??
For this to work, the plugin 'Numbered Booksmarks' must be installed. For instructions, see Is there a bookmarks feature in Geany?. General install instruction for Geany plugins. Essentially it is: apt-cache search geany on Ubuntu to get the list, and sudo apt-get install geany-plugin-numberedbookmarks to install. On Windows, it is part of the EXE plugin installer.
In the plugin manager, enable it to load at startup.
Dismiss the Find dialog
Menu Edit → Preferences (Ctrl + Alt + P) → 'General' → tab 'Miscellaneous', check 'Hide the Find dialog'.
Make search wrap around
That is, also search from the beginning of the document after the last match at the end of a document (otherwise, apparent false negative search results).
Menu Edit → Preferences (Ctrl + Alt + P) → 'General' → tab 'Miscellaneous', check 'Always wrap search'.
Insert newlines when using search&replace
For find and replace, empty lines can be used in the replacement string, but it is far from obvious that it is possible. To do it:
Ultraedit Ubuntu
- Use 'n' in field 'Replace with:'
- Check option 'Use regular expressions'
- Check option 'Use multi-line matching'
Or simpler:
- Use 'n' in field 'Replace with:'
- Check option 'Use escape sequences'
This feature is e.g. useful when breaking up very long lines of HTML by replacing space with newline.
Similarly, it is also possible to match newlines in the search (e.g. to find lines separate by more than one empty line).
An alternative (incl. for more complex scenarios) is to use the plugin Mini Script (see above for details). It enables to run arbitrary script code on the selection in a Geany document (passed to the script by standard input (as seen by the script)) and replacing the selection (passed from the script by standard output). For example, script code for this in Perl:
Note that Mini Script does not remember the script code and thus it must be manually set up for every Geany session…
Menu Edit → Preferences → Editor → Indentation → Type. Set to 'Spaces'.
Menu Edit → Preferences → Editor → Indentation → Tab key indents. Uncheck.
Note: It works only for documents opened after this change (not current ones), so the easiest way is probably to restart Geany.
Changing keyboard shortcuts to the same as in UltraEdit
So they are the same as in UltraEdit. This is also important for using a macro keyboard (no need for duplication).
The keyboard shortcuts are changed in menu Edit → Preferences (which itself has keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + P – but it conflicts with the Cinnamon applet 'Color Picker'…) → Keybindings
Close document (Ctrl + F4)
E.g., so a macro keyboard works the same.
Item 'Close' in section 'File'.
(Original keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + W)
Find next (F3)
E.g. so a macro keyboard works the same.
Item 'Find Next' in section 'Search' (about 40% way down).
(Original keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + G)
Find previous (Ctrl + F3)
E.g. so a macro keyboard works the same.
Item 'Find Previous' in section 'Search' (about 40% way down).
(Original keyboard shortcut: Shift + Ctrl + G)
Set bookmark (Ctrl + F2)
E.g. so a macro keyboard works the same.
Item 'Toggle Marker' in section 'Go to' (about half way down).
Note that the Ctrl key is listed as 'Primary'.
(Original keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + M)
Next bookmark (F2)
E.g. so a macro keyboard works the same.
Item 'Go to Next Marker' in section 'Go to' (about half way down).
Note that the Ctrl key is listed as 'Primary'.
Press 'Override' to remove the existing keyboard shortcut for 'Switch to Editor'.
(Original keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + .)
Previous bookmark (Alt + F2)
E.g. so a macro keyboard works the same.
Preparation: Ubuntu (and variants like Ubuntu MATE) may already use this keyboard shortcut.
In Ubuntu, disable the keyboard shortcut for 'Key to execute a command' by installing and using CompizConfig Settings Manager. Note that it may not be that easy to do – for the linked-to solution it worked for me on Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus), but not Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver).
In Ubuntu MATE (much easier): Window key → 'k' → select 'Keyboard Shortcuts'. In section 'Desktop' (second section), double click 'Show the panel's ‘Run Application' dialog box' and press backspace (to clear it). It takes effect immediately; there is no need to restart anything.
In Cinnamon: Window key → 'sys' → select 'System Settings'. In section 'Hardware' (third section), open 'Keyboard'. In tab 'Shortcuts', click 'General' (left panel) → click on 'Run dialog' on the right → select and single click on 'Alt + F2' (will display 'Pick an accelerator') in the lower half ('Keyboard bindings') → press Backspace (to delete/clear the shortcut). It takes effect immediately; there is no need to restart anything.
In Geany's preferences, Keybindings, set Alt + F2 for item 'Go to Previous Marker' in section 'Go to' (about half way down).
(Original keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + ,)
Insert date (Alt + 2)
User defined as text template '2' in UltraEdit.
Studies – flashcards for serious students 1 1 4. Example: 2020-03-29
But this conflicts with selecting a tab (the second tab in this case) and using combinations of Ctrl, Shift and Alt conflicts with the Geany plugin 'Numbered Bookmarks'. A workaround is to create a text template with the name '_2' and content '{command:date +'%Y-%m-%d'}'. Then the date is inserted by typing '_2' followed by TAB.
Insert date and time (Alt + 3)
Change keyboard shortcut:
In menu Edit → Preferences → Keybindings → sub section Insert → Insert date: Change to Alt + 3 (from the default Shift + Alt + D)
User defined as text template '3' in UltraEdit.
Example: 2020-03-29T144457
Note that this overrides selecting the third tab with Alt + 3…
(Original keyboard shortcut: Shift + Alt + D)
Go to line (Ctrl + G)
Item 'Go to Line' in section 'Go to' (about half way down).
Ultraedit Linux Crack
Note that the Ctrl key is listed as 'Primary'.
(Original keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + L)
Trim trailing spaces (Shift + F12)
Note: A keyboard shortcut was not added until version 1.34 (2018-12-16). Thus the default installed version of Geany on Ubuntu 16.04 (version 1.27, 2016-04-17) and Ubuntu 18.04 (version 1.32, 2017-11-19) does not have it… Ubuntu 19.10 has version 1.35, 2019-04-28. Brave browser 80 1 4 96 full.
Item 'Strip Trailing Spaces' in section 'Document' (about 3/4 way down).
If it is not available, an alternative is to use the implicit Alt + D, S keyboard shortcut.
More keyboard shortcuts
Physical navigation of tabs
We want physical navigation of tabs with Ctrl + Tab (to the right) and Shift + Ctrl + Tab (to the left), like it is possible in Firefox (with unchecking of option 'Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order'). Or in other words, we want the same keyboard shortcuts for this navigation in both Firefox and Geany, so we can easily use a macro keyboard (no need to use modifier keys for this very very common action).
There isn't any setting for that in Geany, but there are actions for both kinds of navigation (with associated keyboard shortcuts):
Switch to left document
Switch to right document
Switch to last used document
In Geany's preferences, Keybindings, section 'Notebook tab' (near the end):
Clear the keyboard shortcut item 'Switch to last used document' by double clicking and pressing OK (without pressing any keyboard shortcut). (Original keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Tab.)
Set 'Switch to left document' to Shift + Ctrl + Tab (original keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Page_Up).
Set 'Switch to right document' to Ctrl + Tab (original keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Page_Down).
Templates
In Geany, they are called 'snippets' (templates mean something else in Geany).
Edit file snippets.conf, from menu Tools → Configuration Files → snippets.conf. Add to the '[Default]' or '[None]' section.
Example: XXXX
And we can assign a keyboard shortcut, like in UltraEdit, in section '[Keybindings]' (but even then, Ctrl + 0 does not work – it could be a similar shortcut to the one in UltraEdit where we have used Alt + 0):
_0=9
Insert date
Change the format of the template function XYZ: Menu Edit → Preferences (Ctrl + Alt + P) → Templates → Date, to '%Y-%m-%d'
Insert date and date/time
This is a built-in function in Geany:
Change format:
Menu Edit → Insert Date → Set Custom Data Format, to '%Y-%m-%dT%H%M%S'.
Usage (see above for changing the keyboard shortcut): Menu Edit → Insert Data → Use Custom Data Format.
It can also be done with templates (like in UltraEdit). Setting:
Menu Edit → Preferences (Ctrl + Alt + P) → Templates → Date & Time, to '%Y-%m-%dT%H%M%S'.
Bookmarks
Persistent bookmarks
Geany does not remember bookmarks by default, making them pretty much useless. What is the point of bookmarks if they are not saved across sessions??
For this to work, the plugin 'Numbered Booksmarks' must be installed. For instructions, see Is there a bookmarks feature in Geany?. General install instruction for Geany plugins. Essentially it is: apt-cache search geany on Ubuntu to get the list, and sudo apt-get install geany-plugin-numberedbookmarks to install. On Windows, it is part of the EXE plugin installer.
In the plugin manager, enable it to load at startup.
Dismiss the Find dialog
Menu Edit → Preferences (Ctrl + Alt + P) → 'General' → tab 'Miscellaneous', check 'Hide the Find dialog'.
Make search wrap around
That is, also search from the beginning of the document after the last match at the end of a document (otherwise, apparent false negative search results).
Menu Edit → Preferences (Ctrl + Alt + P) → 'General' → tab 'Miscellaneous', check 'Always wrap search'.
Insert newlines when using search&replace
For find and replace, empty lines can be used in the replacement string, but it is far from obvious that it is possible. To do it:
Ultraedit Ubuntu
- Use 'n' in field 'Replace with:'
- Check option 'Use regular expressions'
- Check option 'Use multi-line matching'
Or simpler:
- Use 'n' in field 'Replace with:'
- Check option 'Use escape sequences'
This feature is e.g. useful when breaking up very long lines of HTML by replacing space with newline.
Similarly, it is also possible to match newlines in the search (e.g. to find lines separate by more than one empty line).
An alternative (incl. for more complex scenarios) is to use the plugin Mini Script (see above for details). It enables to run arbitrary script code on the selection in a Geany document (passed to the script by standard input (as seen by the script)) and replacing the selection (passed from the script by standard output). For example, script code for this in Perl:
Note that Mini Script does not remember the script code and thus it must be manually set up for every Geany session…
Changing case of text
Geany doesn't have the same range of functions as UltraEdit, but toggling the case of the selection may be sufficient (menu Edit → Format → 'Toggle Case of Selection' (Ctrl + Alt + U). Note: despite the name, it doesn't toggle the case of each individual character. Instead it changes all to lower case unless all is already lowercase. This is what we want – this covers the case (no pun intended) of changing from title case to sentence case.
Map the keyboard shortcut to Ctrl + F5 (UltraEdit's to lower case) – 'Toggle Case of Selection' in section 'Format' in keybindings.
Generate number series
Corresponding to UltraEdit's 'Insert Number'.
Use the Geany plugin 'Insert Numbers'. Enable it in the Plugin Manager. Geany must be restarted for it to turn up in menu Tools.
Note that it only works on a block selection, not a normal selection. It even supports binary and hexadecimal number series.
Record and use macros
The Geany plugin 'Geany Macro' may be able to do it.
Extra features not in UltraEdit
Apply own Perl scripts directly on selected text
The Geany plugin 'Mini Script' (GMS) enables this. And it actually works, despite the poor documentation (missing or misleading). E.g., information (e.g. the current text selection in Geany) to the script (e.g. in Perl) is through the script's standard input and what is output to standard output will replace the selection.
Document tabs can be moved without using the mouse
Ctrl + Shift + PageUp moves a document tab to the left. Ctrl + Shift + PageDown moves a document tab to the right. (The same also works in Firefox.)
Long line marker
Change it from 72 to the standard 77:
Menu Edit → Preferences → Editor → Display. Set 'Column' to 77 (under 'Long line marker').
Missing features in Geany
A find next (now F3) on selected text will not search for that text, unlike in many other text editors (e.g. UltraEdit, Notepad++, and Visual Studio). This is quite cumbersome (the Arduino IDE and Visual Studio Code have the same problem). Though it may prevent the broken F3 for regular expression search in UltraEdit.
Feature to add some text to all columns in a block selection (UltraEdit's menu Column → 'Insert/Fill Columns'). To look at column selection in plugin 'Extra Selection'.
Using replace everything in a document does not display statistics about how many replaces took place (useful for counting strings in a document (by replacing it with the same string)).
Unexpected behaviour/bugs in Geany
Inserting the date does not replace the selection
It ought to work like a paste.
Non-standard keyboard shortcut for case sensitive in the Find dialog
It ought to be the standard Alt + C (as in Visual Studio, Notepad, and Notepad++). UltraEdit has the same problem – it uses the non-standard Alt + M (from 'm' in Match case).
Replace (in the search dialog) does not replace and find next
This unlike in all other text editors. Instead, use the button Replace & Find (keyboard shortcut Alt + N).
Opening a file with long lines crashes Geany
It doesn't technically crash, but it becomes unresponsive for
an unknown (long) length of time. 10 minutes? 2 days? Longer than the heat death of the universe? Who knows. It probably needs to be killed, so it is the same effect as a crash.
It was tried on the export file (SQL) for the (MySQL) database for this very blog. It wasn't that long, about 7 MB and 20,000 lines. But the file had some long lines, e.g. 31000 characters (it seems to be the HTML content of the blog posts as long lines (one long line per a blog post)).
By contrast, UltraEdit opens the exact same file instantly.
Search with a regular expression does not work backwards in the document
Button 'Previous' is dimmed when 'Use regular expressions' is checked.
It at least ought to work on a line-to-line basis (go back one line, search forward – in most cases it wouldn't matter if it only indicated the first match on a line).
UltraEdit does not have a problem searching backwards, so it ought to work in Geany as well.
See also
Geany HowTos (Geany wiki)
Convert CamelCase to lower_case_underscore and vice versa (Geany wiki). Uses Python and custom commands.
User-definable snippets (Geany user manual)
