Hi,
Just thought I would share my method of using an external editor with the Arduino IDE, I am sure many of you old hands have your own method and I acknowledge this is unlikely to be new to many here. However for those new to Arduino and are looking for a middle ground, this may be useful.
Most of the hard work was done by user Riva on these forums
This will only work on Windows, but there are many cross platform editors available that have much the same options that could probably be adapted sublime text 2 and if someone had the know how Komodo-edit with a user defined language would be a great, hint, hint.
To avoid a long post I have attached my method as a text file.
Best regards
Ian