For the last few years I’ve been following with interest a tiny little program called Notepad2. Essentially it’s just a text editor (very similar to Notepad included with Windows), but it does have a few tricks up its sleeve.
For starters, it has syntax highlighting. And I argue, very very nice syntax highlighting. I much prefer it to other editors I have installed on my computers (Dev-C++, Visual Studio, Emacs) as well as others I’ve used in the past (GEdit, Kate). Arguably though it’s not as complex as any of these editors. In addition, it does line wrap, line numbering, and more. Pretty much every part of the editor is configurable. It also automatically detects between Windows, UNIX and MacOS 9 line endings (very useful when you swap source code between Windows and GNU/Linux).
There’s a lot of things it doesn’t do though. It’s not a fully-fledged IDE, by any means. It has no idea about projects, function parameter hinting, Makefiles, or anything like that. If you want an IDE, look elsewhere. Which is why I have Visual Studio installed. It does everything, and then some more (in a few gigabytes of disk space).
Above all else though, there is one very handy reason why I have Notepad2 installed. It’s because it can completely replace Notepad. Because Notepad2 is only a single file, like Notepad, with no other dependencies except Windows itself, it just slots in. After removing all the security on the Notepad.exe file in the Windows folder, you can just copy and paste Notepad2 in. And then all the links and file extensions pointing to Notepad just open Notepad2 instead. If this sounds pretty cool, you can learn how to do it here (XP) or here (Vista). I wish there was an installer for Notepad2 that did all this automatically; at the moment Notepad2 is just distributed as a bare executable file. But I certainly won’t be complaining too loudly.
If you’re looking for a simple editor for when a full IDE isn’t necessary, or you’re still using the default Notepad for everything (shock horror), then I’d definitely give Notepad2 a go. Even if you don’t fully replace the original Notepad, it’s still a pretty cool upgrade from Notepad.
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I still use notepad at work quite heavily, as it’s fast to open and great at taking notes, (hence notepad) I usually use it when I’m on the phone or the like. I don’t really need it to do much more.
ALTHOUGH when I do other types of file edits I use http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm which is open source which I have found quite handy. My workmate uses PSpad which I’ve seen is pretty cool. Maybe you should compare the three sometime….
I’ve used Notepad++ before, didn’t really like. Although, having tabs was one handy feature. I didn’t like it mostly because it seemed fairly unpolished to me. Maybe it’s changed, I’ll give it another go.
Never heard of PSpad, so I’ll check that out too.
Bah … Humbug , vi is the best editor in the world .
Unfortunately, I can’t stand vi/vim/etc. I quite like Emacs (though I’ve hardly touched some of it’s more obscure editing modes, I must admit). Generally though, a good GUI application is much more productive.
Hi,
I also using the notepad++ it’s really nice !
And I use it for the C / C++ and assembly programming .
and used it for the PHP too.