How do I use an external editor in the Quartus II software?

To direct the Quartus® II software to use an external text editor, click Options in the Tools menu. In the Options dialog box, click Text Editor in the Category list. Select Other text editor path name and browse to the editor you want to use.

If your preferred editor includes a command-line option to open a file at a specific line number, you can also specify that command-line option. The capability of opening a design file at a specific line number allows you to locate the source of messages. Turn on Use this editor to locate messages in text files and enter the appropriate command-line options for your editor.

Most UNIX editors support the <line number> option to open the file at a specific line number, so the command-line option is usually  %l %f (where the l in %l is a lower case L, not the number one).

Table 1 shows command-line options for some common editors for Microsoft Windows.