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What do people use instead of Notepad?
07-24-2015, 03:15 AM
I'm currently on the road, using an old laptop that I haven't updated in a few years. A few upgrades were no-brainers (Firefox 3 -> Firefox 39, VLC 1.1.5 -> VLC 2.2.1, etc.), but I don't have a decent replacement for Notepad. The program I do have on here is so old, it has a Y2K compliance statement. What do I want to replace it with?
I don't need anything fancy, but there are a few things that I've grown accustomed to having in that old text editor: - ability to read and write Unix-formatted text files
- ability to use regular expressions in search and replace
- ability to use any installed monospaced font
- ability to set the number of columns between tabs
One thing it doesn't have but could really use is full Unicode support.
I'm looking for something small to download (I'm using the hotel's connection) that works in 32-bit WinXP (the Win7 install disc is back at home).
Suggestions, anyone?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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I'm a fan of vim, though vi is definitely an acquired taste.
Ceteterum censeo emacs esse delendam.
-- ∇×V
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Both UlttraEdit and Notepad++ here.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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TextPad, with Notepad++ and Vim on occasion.
---
The Master said: "It is all in vain! I have never yet seen a man who can perceive his own faults and bring the charge home against himself."
>Analects: Book V, Chaper XXVI
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FocusWriter, with basic Notepad on occasion.
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Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.
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Seconding FocusWriter, but that's more of a basic distraction-free word processor than a simple text editor. It will not only save in unix formats, but also in .odt format if that's your cuppa tea. (I find it useful since then I can go into the file using MSWord or OOWriter and the tabs and formatting will all be present.)
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While we're on the subject, anyone know a good free/low-price (and ad-free) text editor for Android? There was one I was using for a while, but it went adware on me and started filling a third of the screen with obnoxious, brightly-colored and constantly-changing pitches.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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I'd like a decent one for iOS, myself. Preferably one that can read and edit files directly on Dropbox when a network connection is available.
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Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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Notepad++ on Windows, Vim & Geany on Linux. Both of those should run on Windows as well but as Vorticity said Vim is an aquired taste (but powerful editing potential lies with its steep learning curve).
If your looking for an operating system that also happens to have text editing features there's also emacs. (Tl;dr explanation: real versions of emacs are text editors implemented to a large degree in a dialect of lisp, if you can wrap your brain around Lisp then you can make it do nearly anything.)
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Will the transhumanist future have catgirls? Does Japan still exist? Well, there is your answer.
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I've been a fan of Gedit for a long time, for no real reason beyond it was once installed with a Linux distro, I used it for programming and stuff, and it was OK. But not really sure if it includes all the required features.
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from the sound of it, Open office is overkill...
Personally, If not notepad, I use Wordpad.
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
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OO.org is definitely overkill. (Digression: Do people use Open Office or Libre Office? Which fork has the "better" features?)
I've installed Notepad++ It's almost perfect for my needs, now that I've killed the "auto-recognize URLs" function. What would make it perfect would be the ability to change the screen font - have I missed seeing that function, or is it not there at all?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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I believe what you want is Settings --> Style Configurator..., then set the global font.
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Will the transhumanist future have catgirls? Does Japan still exist? Well, there is your answer.
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Rob, I use Open Office, but have not compared it to Libre Office. That said, I am pleased with its feature set and the ability to edit the Word documents that come my way. I have yet to find anything it refuses or chokes on.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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I haven't compared OO.o and Libre Office recently. But here is the most recent comparison I could find on google, a reddit post. I think in general LibreOffice has more development momentum, but as always, it depends on what you're most comfortable using.
-- ∇×V
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I lucked into getting the full-blown Business License version of Office365 through school...
... I must admit, integrated cloud storage is nice. It's the best of having office suite installed on your machine combined with a cloud service like Google Docs.
I'm gonna see if I can keep ahold of it, seeing as how I'm probably gonna wind up using Mac and PC platforms, and Office365 is absurdly crossplatform.
(Engineering major - gonna eventually need a serious workstation for Autocad and rendering, and at least a Macbook because some of the best math and physics applications out there are Mac only. Need proof? Visit the Large Hadron Collider for one of their meetings, and just about every scientist and technician will pop out a Macbook.)
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Looking at the specs I can find, it appears LibreOffice is the only suite that can read old Lotus WordPro files (which I still have some of)...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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Black Aeronaut Wrote:(Engineering major - gonna eventually need a serious workstation for
Autocad and rendering, and at least a Macbook because some of the best
math and physics applications out there are Mac only. Need proof?
Visit the Large Hadron Collider for one of their meetings, and just
about every scientist and technician will pop out a Macbook.) Are you sure they're Mac-only apps? From my experience at programming conventions, only about 60% of the Mac laptops are running Mac OS X. The rest are running the various flavors of Linux. Apple makes some of the best hardware around, but you don't have to be locked into their ecosystem. Anyway not proof.
-- ∇×V
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Dartz Wrote:I've been a fan of Gedit for a long time, for no real reason beyond it was once installed with a Linux distro, I used it for programming and stuff, and it was OK. But not really sure if it includes all the required features. Likewise, at least until something broke and it started making Xorg start eating more and more memory and CPU resources until it broke the keyboard buffer and everything I typed turned to gibberish. The Windows port works okay though. My current preferred text editor is Mousepad.
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Minor update on choosing between LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org: Get the hell off Apache OpenOffice, it’s insecure and not worked on any more. LibreOffice is better in literally every way.
TL;DR version is
- open a .docx file someone emailed you.
- OO.o says "oh, this is actually an $OBSCURE_FORMAT file"
- bug in that format gives full access to your computer (user-level anyway, but local escalation exploits are common).
They have known about this since May and have done nothing to fix it.
-- ∇×V
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