Best free Mac text editor?

[Doctor Fugue]

I'm looking for a text editor that is free (legally free); and I don't need anything fancy. I'm pretty new to this, but I need something stable for working with LilyPond (a music engraver).

The ones I've looked at are TextWrangler, jEdit and Smultron. Essentially I don't want to put a whole bunch of time learning something only to find out later I could have been using something better. Any advice on these or others would be great.

I've also just upgraded to Leopard, if that matters at all. Thanks!

[ott0bot]

I use NeoOffice. It's pretty much all the features of Microsoft Office, but in a free ware version for Mac. It works fantastic, but I'm not sure about compatability with you music writing program. Here's a link, with that and some other great free mac programs: http://www.opensourcemac.org/

[Hatta]

Why Vim of course. Unless you're one of those Emacs fanatics.

There's a reason why one version or another of these two editors have been argued about for over 30 years. They're designed by and for those who need the most out of an editor, coders. Whichever one you pick will take some effort to learn, but it will pay off immensely.

[NotBlaine]

I use smultron for text editing, scripting, etc.
Neo-Office for anything more indepth.

[Niode]

Emacs ftw! Well.. rather aquamacs.

I feel lost without a terminal in windows. It's bewildering. *pokes mouse* I don't need to use you, why is windows forcing me to use you!

[Hatta]

I've found Terminator(http://software.jessies.org/terminator/) with Cygwin to be pretty good. It's a little slow to open and shut down, and it requires Cygwin ruby, but it's pretty good for a windows terminal emulator. It's got tabs and everything.

[RCBH928]

bbedit
there is a free text editor on their website
you might want to check it out

check
macupdate.com

it has all the software with reviews

[selfdestroyer]

I use smultron for text editing, scripting, etc.
Neo-Office for anything more indepth.

same here

[Doctor Fugue]

Thanks! I've spent a bit of time today looking into your suggestions.

I've found some Java editors to be slow to open and they don't scroll smoothly very well through big files; although that might be because I'm running a little MacBook. jEdit, for example, has a good LilyPond tool, but I'm not a fan of how it runs.

Aquamacs appears to be a logical solution. It does seem like overkill for what I need, but perhaps in the end I will appreciate its versatility.

Smultron also interests me, perhaps the most. The problem I've run into now is that LilyPond is broken in Leopard. There are some manual workarounds that I've read about, and those LilyPond/Leopard users are using Smultron. I think I'll give that editor a serious effort...as it has nice syntax colouring for LilyPond that I really like, and it's not so intimidating.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

im not sure if its for mac but OpenOffice 3 works damn well.