Eclipse - best XML editor with syntax coloring?

Question

I just installed Eclipse Indigo. Then I installed the Aptana Studio 3 plugin, but it was very slow , it kept refreshing my entire project (I have a very big project with SVN), so I uninstalled that.

But now I somehow have no decent XML editor left. I tried out Oxygen, but that one was much too bloated, and not free, I think. I just need a simple text editor with syntax coloring and bracket-matching.

What is the default xml-editor in Indigo, and how do I get that one back ?

UPDATE:

Solved.... I was editing 'tpl' files (which are basically xml-files in my application) and those are not associated at default, I linked them to the default HTML-editor and that one suits my needs...

Answer 1

If you are using Eclipse, make sure to pick up the Java EE version - or you can find Web Server Tools, XML, and other web related tooling available in update manager. I have switched just about exclusively to using SpringSource ToolSuite, a branded version of Eclipse with a handful of useful plug-ins - even if you don't use Spring, it has m2eclipse, WST, and a handful of other useful plug-ins pre-installed.

The nice parts of the Eclipse XML editing tools are for WSDL and Schema, where you get easy traversal between files and a graphical interface to visualize the file.

Otherwise the basic XML editor is just simple XML-aware editor, with line coloring, some auto-completion and the like.

Note that not all XML tools were built the same, and you might find one tool says things are valid, while another does not. Most famously this used to occur with WSDLs and Schemas for web services.