Notepad++

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Not to be confused with Notepad2.
Notepad++

Notepad++
Developer(s) Don Ho
Initial release November 24, 2003 (2003-11-24)
Stable release 6.5.3[1] (31 December 2013 (2013-12-31)) [±]
Written in C++
Operating system Microsoft Windows
Size 7.17 MB
Available in Multilingual (49)
Type Source code editor
License GNU General Public License
Website www.notepad-plus-plus.org

Notepad++ is a text editor and source code editor for Windows. It aims to be a lightweight and robust editor for a variety of programming and scripting languages. One advantage of Notepad++ over the built-in Windows text editor Notepad, is that Notepad++ supports tabbed editing, which allows working with multiple open files. Notepad++ opens large files significantly faster and can be used as a replacement for Windows Notepad.[2]

Notepad++ is distributed as free software. The project was hosted on SourceForge.net, from where it has been downloaded over 27 million times[3][4] and twice won the SourceForge Community Choice Award for Best Developer Tool.[5] The project is hosted on TuxFamily since June 2010. To display and edit text and programming language source code files, Notepad++ uses the Scintilla editor component.

Features

General features include:[6]

Source code editing features include:[6]

Notepad++ also supports Unix line endings so that it can be used to work with texts that have been produced on (or will be moved to) machines that run Unix operating systems.

Programming languages

Running under Mac OS X using the Wine compatibility layer.

Notepad++ supports syntax highlighting and code folding for over 50 programming, scripting, and markup languages.[6][8] It attempts to automatically detect the language that a given file uses, using a modifiable list of file extension bindings. Users may also manually set the current language, overriding the extension's default language. The program also supports autocompletion for a subset of the API of some programming languages.

The following languages are natively supported by Notepad++ as of version 6.5:

Users can also define their own language (for syntax highlighting) and its respective API (for autocompletion) by using the built-in User Language Define System.[6] Users may configure the syntax highlighting's font styles per element, per language, and the resulting formatted script may be printed in full-color (WYSIWYG). Additionally, Notepad++ displays indent guidelines when source code is indented with tab characters, and highlights closing braces, brackets and tags.

Plugins

Notepad++ has support for macros and plugins.[9] Currently, there are 27 official plugins for Notepad++, 10 of which are included by default in the program.[10] The first plugin to be included in the program was "TextFX", which includes features such as W3C validation for HTML and CSS, text sorting, character case alteration and quote handling.[11] Plugin site lists over 140 compatible plugins.

Development

This project is originally by Don Ho, a developer based in Paris and graduated from Paris Diderot University in 2000. This project, based on the Scintilla editor component, is written in C++ with only Win32 API calls using only the STL in order to increase performance and reduce program size. The aim of Notepad++ is to reduce overall power consumption by using efficient binaries that require less CPU power.[6]

Interface translations

Notepad++ supports switching into local language after providing a single XML file containing all text that should be translated. As of 2013, user community has contributed translations into many languages, as well as into some local dialects.

Controversy

In March 2008, the "Boycott Beijing 2008" banner was placed on Notepad++'s SourceForge.net homepage.[12] A few months later, most users in China were unable to reach the SourceForge.net website for about a month (June 26, 2008 – July 24, 2008). This led to the widespread belief that China had banned SourceForge.net in retaliation for the Boycott banner.[13][14][15]

In January 2010, the US government forced open source project hosts to comply with US law and deny access from five countries (Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria). As a response to what the developer felt was a violation of the Free and open-source software (FOSS) philosophy, in June 2010, Notepad++ moved out of US territorial jurisdiction by releasing a version on TuxFamily, in France.[16][17]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Download Notepad++ 6.5.2". Notepad++. 31 December 2013. Retrieved 2 January 2013. 
  2. ↑ Notepad++ Official site - Resources
  3. ↑ "SourceForge.net: Project Statistics for Notepad++". SourceForge.net. Retrieved 2011-04-18. 
  4. ↑ "Top Downloads - For all time, updated daily". SourceForge. Retrieved 2011-04-18. 
  5. ↑ "SourceForge's 4th Annual Community Choice Awards". SourceForge. Retrieved 2009-10-01. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Notepad++ Homepage - "Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding"
  7. ↑ Fox, Geoff (July 7, 2008). "Notepad++ Does It Again Again". AppScout (Ziff Davis Media). Retrieved 2009-10-01. 
  8. ↑ DeCarlo, Matthew (May 26, 2009). "Download of the Week: Notepad++". TechSpot. Retrieved 2009-10-01. 
  9. ↑ Smith, Tim (September 21, 2009). "Notepad++ 5.5". Computeractive. Retrieved 2009-10-01. 
  10. ↑ Notepad++ Download Page
  11. ↑ Future of TextFX
  12. ↑ Notepad++ homepage at the Wayback Machine (archived March 26, 2008)
  13. ↑ SourceForge Blocked In China. Moonlight Blog. June 26, 2008.
  14. ↑ SourceForge Unblocked in China. Moonlight Blog. July 24, 2008.
  15. ↑ Gamedev.net
  16. ↑ notepad-plus-plus.org news - Notepad++ new site: notepad-plus-plus.org
  17. ↑ notepad-plus-plus.org news - Notepad++ 5.7 release (outside the USA)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Notepad++.
Open source
Scintilla-based
Freeware
Commercial software
Discontinued
Web-based
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