A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. Such programs are sometimes known as "notepad" software, following the naming of Microsoft Notepad. Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be used to change files such as configuration files, documentation files and programming language source code.
Notepad is a simple text editor for Microsoft Windows and a basic text-editing program which enables computer users to create documents. It was first released as a mouse-based MS-DOS program in 1983, and has been included in all versions of Microsoft Windows since Windows 1.0 in 1985.
A text file is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists stored as data within a computer file system. In operating systems such as CP/M and MS-DOS, where the operating system does not keep track of the file size in bytes, the end of a text file is denoted by placing one or more special characters, known as an end-of-file marker, as padding after the last line in a text file. On modern operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and Unix-like systems, text files do not contain any special EOF character, because file systems on those operating systems keep track of the file size in bytes. There are for most text files a need to have end-of-line delimiters, which are done in a few different ways depending on operating system. Some operating systems with record-orientated file systems may not use new line delimiters and will primarily store text files with lines separated as fixed or variable length records.
Newline is a control character or sequence of control characters in a character encoding specification that is used to signify the end of a line of text and the start of a new one. Some text editors set this special character when pressing the ↵ Enter key.
TextPad is a text editor for the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems. It is produced by Helios Software Solutions. It is currently in its eighth major version.
The KDE Advanced Text Editor, or Kate, is a source code editor developed by the KDE free software community. It has been a part of KDE Software Compilation since version 2.2, which was first released in 2001. Intended for software developers, it features syntax highlighting, code folding, customizable layouts, regular expression support, and extensibility.
SciTE or SCIntilla based Text Editor is a cross-platform text editor written by Neil Hodgson using the Scintilla editing component. It is licensed under a minimal version of the Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer.
jEdit is a free software text editor available under the GNU General Public License version 2.0. It is written in Java and runs on any operating system with Java support, including BSD, Linux, macOS and Windows.
Notepad++ is a text and source code editor for use with Microsoft Windows. It supports tabbed editing, which allows working with multiple open files in a single window. The project's name comes from the C increment operator.
This article provides basic comparisons for notable text editors. More feature details for text editors are available from the Category of text editor features and from the individual products' articles. This article may not be up-to-date or necessarily all-inclusive.
PSPad editor is a freeware text editor and source editor intended for use by programmers. First released in 2001, this software is produced by a single Czech developer, Jan Fiala, for the Windows platform.
TED Notepad is freeware portable text editor software for Microsoft Windows, developed by Juraj Šimlovič since 2001, originally as a school project. It looks similar to Windows Notepad, but provides additional features, including experimental line completion or selection jumping.
Scintilla is a free open source library that provides a text editing component function, with an emphasis on advanced features for source code editing.
EditPlus is a text editor for the Microsoft Windows operating system, developed by Sangil Kim of ES-Computing. The editor contains tools for programmers, including syntax highlighting, file type conversions, line ending conversion, regular expressions for search-and-replace, keystroke, spell check, full support for Unicode editing, customizable keyboard shortcuts, auto-completion, code folding, and more. Files can be browsed and edited in tabs, and an internal file browser is implemented in the software.
Geany (IPA:ʒeːniː) is a lightweight GUI text editor using Scintilla and GTK, including basic IDE features. It is designed to have short load times, with limited dependency on separate packages or external libraries on Linux. It has been ported to a wide range of operating systems, such as BSD, Linux, macOS, Solaris and Windows. The Windows port lacks an embedded terminal window; also missing from the Windows version are the external development tools present under Unix, unless installed separately by the user. Among the supported programming languages and markup languages are C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, PHP, HTML, LaTeX, CSS, Python, Perl, Ruby, Pascal, Haskell, Erlang, Vala and many others.
AkelPad is a small, expandable text editor for Microsoft Windows. AkelPad's author states that the program can "replace standard Notepad" and has many features which NotePad lacks.
Editra is a cross-platform, open-source text editor, released under a wxWindows license. It is written by Cody Precord in Python, and it was first publicly released in June 2007. As of November 2011 the project is in alpha development phase, but "stable" builds are available for download. Editra has gained notability for being a text editor incorporated in Ren'py. The main site is down as of at least July 2019.
Multi-Edit is a commercial text editor for Microsoft Windows created in the 1980s by Todd Johnson. Multi Edit Software obtained ownership rights for the product in October 2002. Multi-Edit contains tools for programmers, including macros, configurable syntax highlighting, code folding, file type conversions, project management, regular expressions, three block highlight modes including column, stream and line modes, remote editing of files via FTP and interfaces for APIs or command lines of choice. The editor uses a tabbed document interface and sessions can be saved.
EditPad is a Notepad replacement text editor for Windows, with multi-Tabs, regular expression search and replace, syntax highlighting, macros, and multi-lingual Unicode support.
