Lua editors

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

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


 * AddOn Studio 2010
 * Another free version of Visual Studio tailored for WoW mod creation based on Visual Studio 2010, functional and up to date.

Lua (Open Source)
 * Under development and will, in time, hopefully provide a useful IDE for WoW Lua script development.

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.

Eclipse
 * Eclipse + the Lua Development Tools plug-ins. For Windows, Mac OS X and other platforms. LDT includes syntax coloring, error markers, code snippets, code navigation, … and a debugger (not usable w/ WoW though, since it needs LuaSocket :.
 * Eclipse + the Lua Eclipse plugin. For Windows, Mac OS X and other platforms.

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

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,, etc.), and much more.

IntelliJ IDEA
 * IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate is a full-featured commercial IDE. Sylvanaar has written a very extensive Lua plugin that supports intentions, detects global variables, and a slew of other features - this can be installed directly from IDEA itself via the plugins section.

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.

LuaEdit (Open Source)
 * Complete professional looking Lua IDE - Windows 98/2000/XP

luaTopping (Open Source)
 * (Under Development) luaTopping is a NetBeans plugin that adds WoW Addon "Project" support to the NetBeans IDE. Features include common addon file templates and the ability to deploy to WoW folder. The accompaning luaSupport module provides lua language support (syntax highlighting and grammar verification). Desired features include code completition, WoW API hints/help, among others.

Notepad++ (Open Source)
 * A free source code editor, which supports several programming languages, including LUA and XML.

Programmer's Notepad
 * Light weight notepad that adds syntax coloring. Supports many languages (current beta has Lua support)

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.

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

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.

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.

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

ZeroBrane Studio (Open Source; Windows/Mac OSX/Linux)
 * A lightweight Lua IDE with code completion, syntax highlighting, remote debugger, code analyzer, and live coding.

Shareware

 * DForD LuaCoding : A full graphical Lua IDE. It supports syntax highlighting, symbol browsing/searching, auto-completion, code snippet, debugging, building and more. If you know MSVC, you'll be comfortable immediately (F5 to start debugging, F9 for breakpoints, etc). It's supported by a fully Lua script written plugin framework.
 * 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 : Excellent text editor which won "Best Application" in the 2008 Shareware Industry Awards. Some notable new features are auto-completion ( all file types ) and Ctags support. The list of syntax files available shows Lua 5.1 is available.
 * Supported OS: Windows Vista/XP/2000/Server 2008/Server 2003/Windows 7 ( 32-bit & 64-bit ).


 * 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 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.
 * ScriptDev : ScriptDev is a powerful script language IDE, it can support some very popular script language, for example, Tcl, Python, Ruby, Lua, Perl and so on.

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.