Talk:Text editor

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[edit] Early discussions

What I was trying to say was that the typical text editor is quite small and simple compared to the typical word processor; think Notepad and Word, vi and StarOffice. Even VIM is tight and small compared to, say, AbiWord. Emacs is something of an outlier, so I don't consider it a typical example. --LDC

Yes, but you could also contrast vi and Notepad in terms of complexity and feature set; Notepad has all of maybe 10 commands, vi has dozens if not hundreds. I haven't used AbiWord to know how it compares to Vim, but I've used Vim enough to regard it as quite complex. At any rate, I'm taking Notepad out of the list of "complex editors". I would substitute WordPad, but it typically saves to RTF format instead of plaintext. --Wesley

WordPad isn't a text editor at all, it's a word processor. Notepad is a text editor, and that's exactly what the text said.


"Plain text" is a term of art with a specific meaning; "ASCII" doesn't clarify that, and in fact would be wrong on non-ASCII machines. --LDC


Yes, yes, text editors can be complex. The article says that, and I don't disagree. They are, however, typically small and simple, and many people prefer small and simple ones, and that's an important characteristic. They do not, however, "typically" lack formatting features of word processors, they almost universally lack those features, and for good reason. --LDC


Actually the list of links to editors needs to be rewritten. There are quite some editors like emacs etc which are platform independent in the sense, that there exist different versions for each platform. --HJH


The link for PFE (under Windows text editors) is now dead. Should there be something in the article about the fact that text editors as a class of applications typically predate all other classes of PC applications? --Anthropic42


I asked this question at talk:qed text editor but no one seems to know the answer : Does anyone know the expansion of QED and how QED is pronounced ? Jay 14:18, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] list

can we change the list into a table and have checkboxes for OSes and such? i checked the licenses but forgot to check OSes. i think a table would be very nice. - Omegatron 16:01, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

various aspects should be color coded like Comparison of instant messengers

{Removed as it has been implemented}

if you think it's a good idea, add more info - Omegatron 19:51, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

i guess no one thinks so? - Omegatron 14:35, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC)
Done in Comparison of text editors. --Minghong 16:14, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] editors

I one of the opening paragraphs "E" as a "more powerful erditor".
I have never heard of this proprietary Windows based editor and I am pretty sure emacs and vi users haven't either.

I added "NEdit" as another example of a powerful programmers text editor since quite alot of unix and Windows programmers will have heard of NEdit and know it as a good example of a powerful programmers text editor.

There is also a Wikipedia page on it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.174.174.31 (talk) 04:23, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I think

   "Microsoft Windows systems come with the very simple Notepad, though many people—especially programmers—prefer to use a text editor with more features like the more powerful E (text editor) or NEdit."

should just be changed to

   "Microsoft Windows systems come with the very simple Notepad, though many people—especially programmers—prefer to use a text editor with more features."

Then it'll sound more like an article instead of an ad. 71.187.223.150 00:56, 17 September 2007 (UTC)