Note: This is a softer requirement than most of our tool setup requirements. In most of our courses, students do not by default have any integrated development environment at their disposal. We find that while students can be productive with just a basic text editor such as Windows Notepad, they find it far more rewarding to work with a more sophisticated editor — at least to have simple features such as auto-indent, multiple documents open at once, tab-width control, etc.
There are many good options here, and if the students or instructor have a preferred tool we encourage them to use it. As a default, we recommend the Crimson text editor: it is freeware, a quick download and easy setup, and performs well for basic text editing, programming, or XML editing tasks.
We provide a few simple custom configuration files for Crimson, and these are referenced in other setup documents. If you choose a different text editor or IDE, you will need to duplicate these configurations for that tool.
