Text Editors
Lightweight text editors are very useful tools. While many word processors can be used to edit text, specialised text editors generally have features for handling text that word processors don't have. Additionally, files saved from a word processing program will often have added data and thus will not work if the file is to be loaded into an external program for processing.
Common text editors are Notepad by Microsoft, the Open Source Notepad++ and cross-platform editors such as vim or Emacs.
TextEdit is included in the utilities suite of Mac OS X. Other text editors used for the Macintosh platform are BBEdit, which is a paid-product, and its lighter weight freeware sibling, TextWrangler, both from Bare Bones Software.
Most users of Linux or Unix machines come down on one side of the Emacs vs. vi debate as to their favourite choice of text editor.
For Haiku machines the default Pe (short for Programmers editor) is simple and powerful and usually provides all the necessary functionality in one program, thus fitting with the Haiku philosophy.
Read more about this topic: Technical Communication Tools
Famous quotes containing the words text and/or editors:
“The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.... Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“The editors are committed to nothing save this: to keep common sense as fast as they can, to belabor sham as agreeably as possible, to give civilized entertainment.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)