When comparing Enso Portable vs Rapid environment editor, the Slant community recommends Rapid environment editor for most people. In the question“What are the best power user tools for Windows?” Rapid environment editor is ranked 24th while Enso Portable is ranked 50th. The most important reason people chose Rapid environment editor is:
Displays wrong entries in red, e.g. paths that do no longer exist.
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Pros
Pro Extensible in Python
GChristensen recently upgraded Enso to Python 3.7, a great improvement over the original v2.5. You can write custom Enso commands in Python through its new web interface (or your favorite editor once you know where to put the files.) There's even an install command to pip install any Python package you need from PyPI. The sky's the limit.
Pro Optional quasimode
Letting go of CapsLock just feels faster than hitting enter (sometimes too fast: be sure to disable the reboot command before turning this on!) Even with quasimode enabled, you can make it modal for that command by tapping Alt.
Pro Easily teach the app to open specific apps and sites
There is a learning function to the app that allows the user to teach the app to open specific items by typing "learn as open" and then clicking on the item one wants it to learn to open.
Pro Can go to existing open windows
By using the "go" command users can switch to their already open windows making this a bit of a window navigator as well as a launcher.
Pro Warnings
Displays wrong entries in red, e.g. paths that do no longer exist.
Pro Easy
Editing of Windows environment variables is easy, splits long lines.
Pro Resolve variables values, make easy a refactoring of PATH by extracting different elements in their own new variable
Pro Convert variables between verbatim and expandable
Windows supports referencing variables within variables, but only if they're marked in the registry as expandable, and conversion between the two types is exposed in the context menu for each variable.
Cons
Con Comes with a reboot command
And a shutdown command too. Installing these is optional, and I recommend that you don't, especially if you use the quasimode. Unless you like losing your work.
Con No message log
According to Raskin's philosophy which inspired Enso, a pop up "dialog" is a bad design. The OK button is a useless input that interrupts your flow. Enso's pop up messages, therefore, are transparent and quickly fade away on their own (like Android Toast messages). Unfortunately, this also means you can easily miss them if you're not paying attention. Raskin's solution was to keep a message log you can refer back to, but Humanized never got around to implementing that for Enso.
Con Usage tends to be slowed by the caps lock
Function of the app relies on the caps lock key being pressed to enter commands, which can slow some people down by having to hold that key down when they are typing commands.
Con Simple
Some may not consider it a "power" user tool.