Lua editors

While any text editor can edit Lua files, many contain additional Lua specific features.

See also

• UI FAQ/AddOn Author Resources

Freeware

WoWUIDesigner

Complete IDE for Lua and XML UI files, including intellisense for many WoW API functions - Windows XP/2000/2003/Vista

Eclipse

Eclipse + the Lua Eclipse plugin. For Windows, Mac OS X and other platforms.

LuaEdit (Open Source)

Complete professional looking Lua IDE - Windows 98/2000/XP

PSPad

Syntax highlighting for Lua and XML files, fully features programmer's editor. Settings for WoW have been developed, which needs to be installed, then all WOW API functions are highlighted! Look here

Komodo Edit (Open Source)

A very nice editor built on top of Mozilla and Scintilla; with the extensibility of Firefox, and the syntax highlighting engine from SciTE.

LuaIDE

Integrated development environment for Lua for Windows

SciTE (Open Source)

A very extensible open source editor. There are three pre-packaged versions for WoW development with Lua and XML syntax highlighting and much more:

SciTE-WoWUI at wowinterface.com

WoW SciTe at wowguru.com

SciTe-Ru at code.google.com

Version with WoW API 3.0 syntax highlighting and calltips.

Notepad++ (Open Source)

A free source code editor, which supports several programming languages, including LUA and XML.

Proton

A nice German freeware editor, unfortunately without UTF-8 support. XML syntax highlighting is supported out of the box, a plugin for Lua is available [1].

Emacs (Open Source)

An extensible, customizable text editor—and more. Complete built-in documentation, including a tutorial for new users. Use lua-mode to get syntax highlighting for .lua files.

gVIM (Open Source)

An extremely powerful, multi-platform editor. Supports syntax highlighting for Lua, XML, and hundreds of other file types, as well as automatic indentation/comment formatting, the ability to jump between matching tags (if then else, <open></close>, etc.), and much more.

Smultron

Free Cocoa-based text editor for the Mac written for Mac OS X 10.4 ("Tiger"). Very good. Has LUA syntax coloring.

TextWrangler

Free general purpose text/code editor with Lua and XML syntax highlighting.

Eddie

Free programmer's editor Mac OS X. Includes Lua syntax coloring and function popup plus many other features.

Crimson Editor

A Free professional Windows code editor, comes with Lua and XML syntax highlighting, along with many other file types.

WoWLua CE

A Crimson Editor Specification for color coding World of Warcraft API, Widget, and Event keywords.

B:Lua (Open Source)

Under development and will, in time, hopefully provide a useful IDE for WoW Lua script development.

Programmer's Notepad

Light weight notepad that adds syntax coloring. Supports many languages (current beta has Lua support)

AddOn Studio

A free version of Visual Studio tailored for WoW mod creation.

Shareware

QDE

Quotix Development Environment for Lua. It supports project management, autocomplete functionality, a multi-document interface, debugging and much more. Sadly doesn't include a debug mode to test scripts with.

Zeus for Windows

IDE with Lua syntax highlighting, code folding, project management, integrated version control. The IDE is fully scriptable using Lua

TextPad

Not an official Lua IDE however, with an available syntax file available as an addon provides great syntax highlighting.

Edit+

Not an official Lua IDE however, with an available syntax file available as an addon provides great syntax highlighting. You can freely download and try it for 30 days. If you find it useful and decide to keep it over 30-day evaluation period, you should pay the registration fee. Nag window remains on startup if not registered.

EmEditor

Comprehensive text editor with Unicode support can be used both for LUA and XML. Lua syntax highlight file available at Features.

EditPad Pro

Great notepad replacement/enhancement with just about the best support of any editor for Regexes. Lua syntax hilight and code navigation with a Lua add-on located on this page. Free 30-day evaluation copy of EditPad Pro or download EditPad Lite, free for non-commercial use. EditPad Lite and Pro are available for Windows and Linux.

UltraEdit

Comprehensive programmer's text editor with coloration, code folding, autoindentation, code projects, etc. You can freely download and try it for 30 days. Syntax definitions for WoW Lua and XML are maintained here: UltraEdit WoW wordfile.txt or a new complete lua.txt including WoW, WotLK, Ace2 & Ace3 API functions and XML is available at http://wowluatxt.googlecode.com

SubEthaEdit

Collaborative text editor with Lua syntax highlighting. For Mac OS X.

Sublime Text

Beautiful Windows text editor with inbuilt Lua syntax highlighting.

Commercial

Visual Studio

How to use Microsoft Visual Studio for WoW AddOn-Development.

TextMate

Mac OS X editor. With the Lua Bundle for syntax highlighting. More information on installing TextMate bundles.

E-TextEditor

Windows editor with support for TextMate bundles and themes. With the Lua Bundle for syntax highlighting. More information on installing TextMate bundles in E-TextEditor.

BBEdit 8.7

Now supports, and has syntax-directed text coloring, for Lua.

Decoda

Lua IDE and graphical debugger with syntax highlighting, source code control (SCC) support, etc. Non-commercial licensing also available.

Adobe Dreamweaver CS3

Will open and edit LUA files in code view.

External links

• Lua Addons Great resource for more Lua IDEs and other Lua tools