Scintilla (software)

Scintilla is a free, open-source library that provides a text editing component function, with an emphasis on advanced features for source code editing.

Scintilla

Screenshot of SciTE, which uses the Scintilla component
Developer(s)	Neil Hodgson, et al.[1]
Initial release	17 May 1999; 25 years ago (1999-05-17)
Stable release	5.5.4[2]  (18 December 2024; 4 months ago (18 December 2024)) [±]
Repository	sf.net/p/scintilla/code/
Written in	C++
Operating system	Windows NT and later, Mac OS 10.6 and later, Unix-like with GTK+, MorphOS
Type	Text editor
License	Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer[3]
Website	scintilla.org

Features

Scintilla supports many features to make code editing easier in addition to syntax highlighting. The highlighting method allows the use of different fonts, colors, styles and background colors, and is not limited to fixed-width fonts. The control supports error indicators, line numbering in the margin, as well as line markers such as code breakpoints. Other features such as code folding and autocompletion can be added. The basic regular expression search implementation is rudimentary, but if compiled with C++11 support Scintilla can support the runtime's regular expression engine. Scintilla's regular expression library can also be replaced or avoided with direct buffer access.

Currently, Scintilla has experimental support for right-to-left languages.^[4]

Scinterm is a version of Scintilla for the curses text user interface. It is written by the developer of the Textadept editor. Scinterm uses Unicode characters to support some of Scintilla's graphically oriented features, but some Scintilla features are missing because of the terminal environment's constraints.^[5]

Other versions

• ScintillaNET^[6] – a wrapper for use on the .NET Framework
• QScintilla^[7] – Qt port of Scintilla
• wxScintilla^[8] – wxWidgets wrapper for Scintilla
• wxStyledTextCtrl^[9] – class acting as a wrapper for Scintilla in the wxWidgets toolkit
• CsScintilla^[10] – CopperSpice port of Scintilla
• Delphi wrappers:
  • TScintEdit^[11] – part of Inno Setup
  • TDScintilla^[12] – simple wrapper for all methods of Scintilla
  • TScintilla^[13] – one of the components in the Delphi Scintilla Interface Components (as of 2009-09-02, this project is no longer under active development)

Software based on Scintilla

Notable software based on Scintilla includes:^[14]

• Aegisub^[15]
• Altova XMLSpy^[16]
• Ch^[17]
• Code::Blocks
• CodeLite
• ConTEXT^[18]
• Eric Python IDE
• FlashDevelop
• Geany
• gPHPedit
• IDEal
• Inno Setup Compiler IDE (as of 5.4^[19])
• Keil μVision IDE
• Komodo
• MySQL Workbench
• Notepad++
• Notepad2
• Notepad3^[20][21]
• Notepad4^[22]
• Perl Application Development and Refactoring Environment (Padre)
• PureBasic^[23]
• SciTE
• TextAdept^[24]
• Uniface^[25]
• ZeroBrane Studio IDE