Boy, I haven’t seen any mention, in the few years I’ve been using Maya, of any sort of MEL IDE. But I haven’t tried to mess with MEL until now. So what IDE are people using out there?
I suspect people use a text editor, and that is about it. If that is the case, since I’m about to dive into MEL myself, what text editors would you suggest? I pulled down a promising looking editor called Syn, it seems powerful enough, but if there is something better out there, I’m all ears.
-=STZ=-
UltraEdit.
I use it everyday and love the fact that I can get MEL syntax highlighting features through a simple text file available @ www.highend3d.com
http://mpolak.neostrada.pl/zip_cat/MayaMELScripter02.exe
found this program some time ago, only alpha version, but looks like it has potential 
be sure to check the homepage at http://mpolak.of.pl/
oh sorry thought you wanted to know what app to use…
well I myself use ultraEdit, though I can’t make the syntax highlighting thing work 
I also use UltraEdit as my regular text editor for most things…animation lists, etc. I love the column mode…makes scripting VERY clean…
Its search and replace on groups of files has come in VERY handy…
It is also a great HTML editor, among other languages…
I use Ultraedit aswell, though I can´t get Syntaxhighlighting work properly aswell. Sometimes it works, sometimes it starts making lines gray although parts should be blue or something. Also with every new document you open, you have to select the Mel-Syntaxhighlighting again, couldn´t find any menu to get that as standard.
Also what really anoyed me, I got ugly looking stuff in a custom window everywhere where there were spaces. There where some stupid letters that you couldn´t see in UltraEdit, I had to delete spaces again in Wordpad and put them in again, then it worked.
I love the columnstuff though, and search an replace are really helpfull, especially when you need to replace words in more than one file!
Originally posted by McMaster
I use Ultraedit aswell, though I can´t get Syntaxhighlighting work properly aswell. Sometimes it works, sometimes it starts making lines gray although parts should be blue or something. Also with every new document you open, you have to select the Mel-Syntaxhighlighting again, couldn´t find any menu to get that as standard.
Also what really anoyed me, I got ugly looking stuff in a custom window everywhere where there were spaces. There where some stupid letters that you couldn´t see in UltraEdit, I had to delete spaces again in Wordpad and put them in again, then it worked.
I love the columnstuff though, and search an replace are really helpfull, especially when you need to replace words in more than one file!
i have had no problems with the syntax highlighting…I will look at my settings and post them here
I’m personally a fan of Visual SlickEdit ( http://www.slickedit.com ) on the PC.
I severly miss it now that I left my last job. 
I actually wrote my own MEL Scripting app for OSX. Since my Mac and PC are networked and all the scripts reside on the server drives, i type on the Mac while the PC runs Maya. Works well.
http://www.editplus.com/
very light, very powerful, syntax highlighting for almost every programming language (you have to download the mel highlighter).
i think theres noting better then UltraEdit ( i havent see other text editor which have a functions list feature like UltraEdit)
leviathan,
Where did you find the MEL syntax for the crimson editor? I couldn’t find it on the homepage. Since the crimson is freeware I’d like to try it =)
http://www.highend2d.com/tools/?section=NT
that’s where it can be found…always remember…google is your friend 
the name is “MEL Syntax Highlighting for Crimson Editor v0.1”
Thank you very much (B-HOLM).
Btw, I visited Roskilde for the first time this year. Had a really good time there. =)
I’m using Hydra for OSX Mel development. I posted a MEL syntax pList on their site. Hydra does nearly everything UltraEdit does that is meaningful to Mel development and it’s free.
-jl
