Talk:Text editor
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What I was trying to say was that thetypical 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
WordPad isn't a text editor at all, it's a word processor. Notepad is a text editor, and that'sexactly what the text said.
"Plain text" is a term of art with a specific meaning; "ASCII" doesn't clarify that, and in fact wouldbe 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'san important characteristic. They do not, however, "typically" lack formatting features of wordprocessors, 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 attalk:qed text editor but no one seems to know the answer : Does anyone know the expansion of QED and how QED is pronounced ?Jay14:18, 8 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
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 likeComparison 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 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.—Precedingunsigned comment added by81.174.174.31 (talk)04:23, 11 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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.71.187.223.15000:56, 17 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
LAPIS? --anon
The "Special features" section includes a bullet point, "World Wide Web programmers...", that includes a list of HTML editors. I'd like to point out the obvious, that this article is abouttext editors, and the section is discussing text editors with special features geared toward Web development. Dreamweaver, NVU, GoLive, and Frontpage, though they may have code-editing capability, are primarily graphically-driven WYSIWYG interfaces. No one in their right mind would consider these "text editors". Including these in the list is misleading and irrelevant. They should be removed. There are certainly many other text-based HTML coding editors to pad out the list, there is no need to expand the definition until its meaning is lost.12.233.146.130 (talk)17:30, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The last set of edits did reduce word count, but some of it is not an improvement. For instance "snippets" means small fragments. Syntax highlighting generally colors "most" of a file - not just small fragments. Suggest rewording the edit using conventional English rather than idioms which do not relate to the topic.Tedickey (talk)08:49, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This page appears to have been vandalized, presumably by SG Analytics. Replaced with text from Wiktionary. --SG—Precedingunsigned comment added bySchreibergasse (talk •contribs)13:06, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Another editor expressed the opinion that adding links to point to yet another editor's original research is unrelated to that original research.TEDickey (talk)10:26, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Recent edit removed the fact that vi is a standard editor, and added spurious w-link for Emacs. Neither part of the change was necessaryTEDickey (talk)20:39, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
User:LMSchmitt has made an edit today that I reverted. To the explanation of the difference between a text editor and a word processor, he has digressed into markup languages, giving LaTeX as an example. His change history calls it "a bit misleading," and his addition points out that the text operated on by a text editor could "be structured into columns and tables." Okay; similarly, the text being edited isn't executable, but you might be writing a program that eventually would be. In short, I think the discussion ofwhy the user was editing text is outside the scope of the article. Separately, LMSchmitt differentiates the word processor as a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) environment. But so is the full-screen text editor, which likewise portrays the complete text file on the screen, space permitting. (What you see is not what you get only if you pass the output through markup processors and so on). WYSIWYG differentiated these text editors from their predecessors in which what you saw was nothing (except your editing commands) unless you should type a command to print out a few lines.Spike-from-NH (talk)03:47, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
For programming, text editors with support forsyntax highlighting, brace matching, and other features are preferred. We could name other such features, and especially outsource the darn HTML editors.User:ScotXWt@lk14:04, 10 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I searched the article for "tab" and for "multi" (looking for something like "multiple files") and made no hits. --Jerome Potts (talk)18:11, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Aha, just foundMultiple document interface. There pbbly should be a pointer to it. --Jerome Potts (talk)18:13, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"Advanced editors can use regular expressions to search and edit text or code." Even one of the most basic text editors, ed, has this ability. Is this really a something that signifies an "advanced editor"?46.230.135.7 (talk)23:56, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
ConTEXT is one of a thousand (or more) non-notable programs, and the material in that page has little relevance to a general topic page such as this.TEDickey (talk)22:03, 17 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Text editor#Advanced features contains a list of features. Should it include citations for editors proving those features, or would that be TMI? What about feature listed earlier as basic features?Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk)16:17, 21 January 2020 (UTC).[reply]
A recent edit substituted the standard abbreviation for "versus" (a term used to indicatecontrast withvis-à-vis (a term indicating arelationship). As such, it is neither more accurate nor appropriateTEDickey (talk)21:31, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WRT "An example of such program is "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad)" Does this imply that there is a notepad (software) other than the one in Windows? from Microsoft? That is not a thing IMO. Seems to me this should be more like: An example of such a program isNotepad.Stevebroshar (talk)15:14, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A recent edit assigned signatures to old comments, which appeared to have some errors. Perhaps to support that edit, if one had referred to the changes which purportedly were unsigned, that would be a constructive way to approach the issue. A bulk change without that supporting information is not constructiveTEDickey (talk)07:32, 6 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps to support that edit, if one had referred to the changes which purportedly were unsigned, that would be a constructive way to approach the issue.– seven messages were signed and dated, sevendiff links were provided in theedit summaries of two edits.First edit referred to the following six changes:Special:Diff/290519,Special:Diff/290520,Special:Diff/290523,Special:Diff/290522,Special:Diff/1960042, andSpecial:Diff/3499067.Second edit referred toSpecial:Diff/255057751. Each instance of {{subst:Unsigned}} and {{subst:Undated}} was placed right after the corresponding message, as per documentation of these templates.
supporting informationyou were looking for? —andrybak (talk)07:47, 6 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
