I think this is very relevant due to the amount of text editing people here have to do, and when talking with people about these things, it seems that most still struggle with notepad or other very suboptimal editors. It would be good to raise some debate about this so, that people become aware of good editors and their properties.
Of course someone may also point me to an editor better than I'm currently using.

Ones that I've tried;

Editpad: Project control, extremely stable, very pleasing to use, customizable, syntax-highlighted, working wordwrap, charset conversions, tab visualization and much more. The pro version trial is free if you enjoy watching nag screens.

ConTEXT: As above but last time i checked lacked some of the features and especially wordwrap. Present version is told to sometimes chrash and kill files. Free.

PSPad: As Editpad but even more features (some for HTML-editing), text compare, extremely customizable. Wordwrap works unexpectedly and is generally broken. Free.

VIM & Emacs: Unix-originated editors, culminations of decades of developement. Absolutely everything, hard to use and learn when compared to native Windows editors. Suffer from maintaining direct compatiblity with their textmode counterparts.

Of these, Editpad is the best by a wide margin, but regrettably not completely free. People in other threads mentioned alphaedit and likewise editors, what's their deal?

have you tried alphaEdit3? http://alphals.shellscape.net/download.php?11
here's a review http://www.shell-shocked.org/article.php?id=192

metapad is what i use, it is just like notepad, except lots more features. the main advantage is that it is just as fast to load as notepad is, pretty much the only reason i stayed with notepad for so long even after trying out a few other text editors

and its free(:

Notepad is all ive ever needed for litestep, ever.

Editors with syntax highlighting, spellcheckers, and all other switches, nobs, lights, and wistles are nice for other things though.

UltraEdit (it's not free, but it's very highly regarded.)

Oh and of course there's LSTM2 which was specifically designed for LS theme editing. ;)

I actually still use SciTE, which uses the same control as ae3, but loads a lot faster and has lexers for 40+ languages.

I don't know how people manage largeish files without block folding (SciTE) or an editor that provides language intelligent navigation. (MSDevStudio)

Aquatron: If you're a notepad addict you should really give metapad a try. :D

lstm2 is quite nice actually :)

I like EditPlus 2.11

sryo: I tried Alphaedit and it's editing engine seems superb. It also has tabs and all the goodies man could hope for... except that it only edits and syntax-highlights Litestep-specific files properly. Has anyone any idea if they're going to expand it to cover other formats too?

RabidCow: I used SciTE a few years ago. It's actually very good and has nice features, but in my opinion it was annoying to work with because it had no real support for multiple open files. I just checked on it again, but that had not been implemented.

And I really can't understand how people get away with notepad. Metapad seemed quite handy, but still seemed a bit scare on features, especially the absence(?) of line numbering was strange, and I like tabs more than multiple open editor widows. Thanks for the recommendation anyway.

Also, at least I pay no attention to the size and bulkiness of a text editor. The startup time shouldn't matter, as like web browsers, the text editor will remain active for as long as the machine stays on. It need not ever be closed, so you'll only have to wait it to load once.

if you want to use multiple syntax color formats, try out SuperEdi from wolosoft.com. it freeware and you can edit/add your own syntax color for other formats.

for just editing litestep I prefer lstm2 (not because we released it),it has a lot of file options for easy themeing, and thats very important to me.

Been using SciTE ever since I discovered it. Highly customizable, and let's not forget it's FREE! get it at http://www.scintilla.org

I actually quite like the fact that configuring it, is much the same as configuring LS, i.e. through text-files :)

Crimson Editor ( http://www.crimsoneditor.com/ )

free, syntax highlight, tabs, you can make custom highligth (make highlight for your own language or un-made language i.e. for .rc files)...