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Notepad++ Notepad++ is a text editor that was first released in 2003, which aims to be an alternative to the unsatisfying editing experience brought by the default Windows text editor, namely Notepad. Starting out as a humble project but constantly getting updates, it grew in popularity over time to eventually become a reference point for many programmers.
This piece of software is mostly made for developers. Indeed, there are many tools designed to make the development process easier. For example, it can colorize a large number of different programming languages, to make the code easier to read.
Notepad++ is also meant to improve productivity: you can create macros, which are a list of steps that this program will do when you press a certain key combination. Creating macros, you avoid doing repetitive work.
If you fear losing your unsaved work in case of a power shortage, a system crash, or any other potential problem, then you will probably like the fact that Notepad++ automatically backups your work every seven seconds (the time interval is configurable, too).
In case Notepad++ does not have a feature you need, maybe someone has already made a plugin to add this feature. With the integrated plugin manager of Notepad++, it is easy to find a plugin and install it.
However, I found something that I consider to be a major drawback for users employing multiple screens: Notepad++ can only be opened once (by default), this means that you cannot have multiple windows. So if you want to work on multiple screens in order to be more efficient, you are going to have a hard time struggling with the split views and the position of the main window. Although there is a workaround that involves using the -multiInst -nosession switch.
In conclusion, Notepad++'s reputation is well-deserved since it's a full-featured text editor, which allows developers to work significantly more efficiently than with other similar utilities.
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PSPad If you are a web programmer, then I'm sure you know that we usually look for a versatile text editor not too advanced and complex, but neither as simple as the Windows Notepad. So, in this case, PSPad is a great solution. This web programming tool will let you work with many programming languages at the same time within its easy-to-use, tabbed interface.
This simple tool has many great features. Some of them are: you will be able to work with multiple documents simultaneously on different tabs. If you like to work with syntax highlighting your code, then with PSPad you can do it.
You can record, save and playback commonly used sequences with the Macro Recording function. Using clips you can have snippets of code at your fingertips. You can create your own clips and never forget the syntax of the function call again. PSPad has also other useful tools like a HEX editor, an inner navigator with Apache, Code explorer for Pascal, INI, HTML, XML, PHP and other languages, etc.
To sum up, PSPad is a simple yet powerful code and text editor created to help you in your programming work, and one of its best features is that it's totally free.
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AkelPad AkelPad is an easy to use, very useful text editor that coems with an unique unicode representation. Notepad is a wonderful editor, being used to edit files in plain text format, thus it is irreplaceable for designing of Web documentsm, programming, and so on. However, the one comprised in Windows, is very inconvenient due to several limitations. This program claims to be able to fill up these drawbacks.
AkelPad handles full Unicode files written in UTF-8, UTF-16 (LE or BE), UTF-32 (LE or BE) and can auto-detect Unicode files with or without a BOM. BOMs (byte order marks) can also be omitted, if desired, from file writing.
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BlueFish Bluefish is an open-source text editor, specialized in creating/modifying markups or programming language code (HTML, CSS, C, PHP etc). Targeted towards fairly experienced programmers and web designers, this software lacks most of the assisting features found in other similar applications.
It’s intended for people who like to do everything themselves and don’t need/like features that disrupt their work.
The GUI will make Linux users feel like home. Below the top toolbar, you’ll find a few tabs helping you insert markup language tags. Under those tabs you will find basic programming language scripts that can be automatically inserted in the editor and then modified accordingly.
Indentation is automatic, organizing the text in blocks that are easy to see. The dictionary included is a nice addition helping you avoid typos. The interface is customizable, tags and scripts are nicely organized under categories and plug-ins are available to further enhance the program according to your needs.
One thing that seems confusing is the inclusion of code that can be inserted automatically in your text by using the interface. For an experienced programmer it is unnecessary because it takes more time to go through the menus and it's faster and easier for them to just type whatever is needed. So the feature seems to be targeted on users that are not very well familiarized with the language. But at the same time, given the fact that this editor is text only, such an option does not help them much if they don't know how to use the code for a desired effect.
At the core, Bluefish is a text editor, including many features that help speed up your workflow or aid you in creating programs/web pages if you’re not very well familiarized with all the markup/programming code.
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EditPad Lite EditPad Lite is a compact, carefully designed general-purpose text editor, offering all the functionality for text processing.
EditPad Lite allows opening as many files at a time as you need, with no arbitrary file size limit and no line length limit. There is no troubles with heaps of overlapping windows, due to option of switching tabs.
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Gnu Emacs Gnu Emacs is a text editor with many features for both programmers and tech-savvy users. The main feature of Gnu Emacs is the ability to customize the program to your needs by using functions written in the Lisp programming language.
Gnu Emacs has three modes - basic, main and extra. You can insert and delete text, work with files and perform other standard operations in basic mode; you can edit files, choose the markup text language and tune the mode under the programming language in the main mode; you can highlight individual lines of the code and display the function names to your source program in extra mode.
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