Welcome to Ethea SynEdit for Delphi (VCL)

A syntax highlighting edit control for Delphi VCL, with 63 highlighters, code folding, code completion, search and replace, print, export and spell check

A brief description

SynEdit is an edit control for Delphi that is not based on the Windows common controls: the text is painted by the control itself, so it can show syntax highlighting, a gutter with line numbers and bookmarks, code folding, indent guides, special line colors, multiple carets and much more, with the speed of a native control.

Ethea SynEdit is the version of the library maintained by Ethea S.r.l.: a fork of pyscripter/SynEdit, itself the continuation of TurboPack SynEdit and of the original mwEdit by Martin Waldenburg. The upstream project is no longer maintained, so Ethea keeps its own copy, aligned to pyscripter/SynEdit up to the commit of 25 Nov 2025.

It is a source-only release for Delphi 10.4 to 13, Win32 and Win64, with runtime and design-time packages.

What is in the library

• TSynEdit and TDBSynEdit: the editor and its data-aware version.
• 63 highlighters, a multi highlighter and the SynGen generator to write your own.
• Code completion proposal and auto complete.
• Search and replace engines: plain, regular expression and wildcard.
• Code folding.
• Print and print preview.
• Exporters to HTML, RTF and TeX.
• Spell check with the Windows spell checking API.
• Editing helpers: macro recorder, auto correct, URI opener, Python behaviour.
• Options dialog ready to let your users configure the editor.
• Demos of every feature.

Differences from pyscripter/SynEdit

• All the units use the SynEdit. unit scope (SynEdit.pas is now SynEdit.Core.pas), so they never conflict with other SynEdit copies (pyscripter, TurboPack/GetIt) that may be in the search path.
• The packages are named EtheaSynEdit (runtime) and dclEtheaSynEdit (design time), organized per Delphi version in Packages\Delphi10_4, Delphi11, Delphi12 and Delphi13.
• Ethea additions: the Markdown highlighter, TSynEditHighlighter.Options, the settings and print dialogs inside the library, and backward-compatibility properties for existing DFMs (FontSmoothing, IndentGuides, Width, IncPaintLock and DecPaintLock).

Class names are unchanged

Only the unit names changed: classes, types and constants keep their names (TSynEdit, TSynEditSearch, ecXxx, TSynSelectionMode...), so the DFMs of your existing applications still load and you only have to change the uses clauses: see Migrating from another SynEdit.

As a consequence Ethea SynEdit cannot be installed in the IDE together with another SynEdit, because the registered classes have the same names.

Origin and credits

Every unit keeps its original MPL/GPL header with the original copyright. The authors and contributors of the SynEdit and mwEdit projects are listed in the file Doc/Contributors.txt.

License

Dual license MPL 1.1 / GPL 2, as the original SynEdit: see the header of each source file and the files LICENSE-MPL-1.1.txt and LICENSE-GPL-2.0.txt in the root of the project.