When comparing PSPad vs Geany, the Slant community recommends Geany for most people. In the question“What are the best programming text editors?” Geany is ranked 6th while PSPad is ranked 21st. The most important reason people chose Geany is:
Geany is very lightweight thanks to the smaller offering of features.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Integrated FTP client
Pro Simple and small
PSPad is simple, small, and lightweight. It's also quite fast.
Pro Free
PSPad is completely free to download and use.
Pro Code highlighting for many languages
PSPad supports code highlighting for several languages.
Pro Accented words
In PSPad, the user can add accents to words.
Pro Integrated HEX editor
Pro Light and fast
Geany is very lightweight thanks to the smaller offering of features.
Pro Simple project management
Pro Built-in plugin manager
Geany has a built-in plugin manager which can be used to install plugins and add new powerful features to the editor.
Pro Quick search on large files
In Geany you technically search once for a whole search query, unlike Gedit, where once you start typing, the file is searched for in accordance with each substring of what you're typing, all the while leading to terribly annoying lag.
Pro Cross platform
Geany is a cross platform editor, very similar to Notepad++ in Windows.
Pro Build in terminal
Press F5 and code will run without the need to switch between windows.
Pro Actively developed Open Source
Which usually means it will remain free of charge.
Pro Real syntax parsing (not just coloring)
Hence it is capable of showing the methods and inner classes of, e.g., a Java source file.
Pro Options in the menu are easy to find
For example, there is an easy way to change the font and theme in the View menu. No need to search through several syntax styles like in Notepad++ just to be able to change the used font.
Cons
Con Windows only
It's only available for Windows.
Con No code folding
Does not support code folding.
Con No content assist
Con Not very advanced
Similar to Notepad or Gedit.
Con Not many third-party plugins
Geany is not as popular as some other text editors with plugin support. As such it's understandable that it's missing lots of powerful plugins available in other editors.