Without commenting on merits or demerits of Notepad, I'll simply state that I am badly looking for a free Notepad replacement. I've checked Notepad2 and NoteTab Light, but both of them balked when it came to full Unicode and complex script support. Even when these editors claim Unicode support, they don’t work with Indic/Far-Eastern IMEs (I get ???? when typing).
Right click in Notepad and pay attention to the last 3 menu items - Right to left reading order, Show Unicode control characters and Insert Unicode control characters. These options are important to me!
Sriram pointed me today to Syn. While it doesn't do Unicode and doesn't claim to be a Notepad replacement it does show some promise of being my long overdue XEmacs replacement ;-).
So folks, any ideas? What is that lean, mean, fast notepad replacement that you use (it must satisfy my somewhat esoteric requirements that the original notepad handles so well)?
17 comments:
hello, how about xyzzy. it's free editor from japan. download from here.
http://www.jsdlab.co.jp/~kamei/cgi-bin/download.cgi
it support unicode encoding and it can be used XEmacs replacement as well.
No luck :(
The UI of xyzzy is in Japanese - and they are using DBCS for their menus so it appears as junk on English system.
They don't support the IMEs either. I've seen that - ability to support Unicode Encoding does not translate into ability to handle the Unicode input correctly. Even graphic software like Paint Shop Pro ail from the same - I cannot key the text into their textbox, but if I copy + paste it from notepad it works.
I was thinking whether my all time favorite text editor ' UltraEdit' (www.ultraedit.com or www.idmcomp.com) is up to the task and this is what I could come up with.
http://liniv.tripod.com/HindiInUEdit.GIF
Is this what you are looking for? If yes or really close then I'd suggest you give UltraEdit a try. Paisa Vasool text editor :)
I hadn't read this part:
"They don't support the IMEs either. I cannot key the text into their textbox, but if I copy + paste it from notepad it works."
First time I tried Hindi in UEdit, the text was coming as ??? even when I changed the IME to HI (is that a correct stmt, 'when I change the IME' ) By default, UEdit sets the document type to ASCII. It has to be changed via either File->Conversions->ASCII to Unicode or File->Conversions->UTF-8 to Unicode. With that change, whatever was being typed was input as Hindi.
Hope that helps.
Hey thanks for checking it out for me Vinil. From the looks of your screenshot, it seems that UltraEdit supports Unicode and Indic IME correctly, but doesn't handle the Indic scripts (complex scripts). Try this - type क (its mapped to 'k') followed by (े mapped to s) - the result should look like के and not क े. If you indeed get के then I should start celebrating :-).
Try textpad
Your order sir, Enjoy the meal; Hope you like it :)
http://liniv.tripod.com/MoreHindiInUEdit.GIF
Anything else, Sir ?
I see that you much appreciate what's been dished out Sir!
May I suggest that you glance through some other features of UltrEdit at http://www.idmcomp.com/products/features.html so that your chest may swell up with the pride of owning such a superlative product.
In case you desire to make the purchase right away, it would be 35$ for a single license. In case you have been convinced that this is THE perfect gift for birthdays and weddings and seminars and annual general body meetings and funerals and whatever you could come up with, a bulk purchase of 200+ licenses would be available for 15$ each.
What would it be, Mastercard or Visa ?
Oh! You prefer to defer it? Fine sir, you may use https://www.ultraedit.com/store/customer/product.php?productid=16137
( wink )
Just Kidding :)
I like it so much that I convinced my Manager to buy it for use at work :) Has been a life saver atleast 2 billion times, give or take a dozen.
Thanks Vinil. Downloaded and took it for a spin. Unfortunately, the complexe script support is half-baked :(. Type के and try to highlight it the selection breaks down into क े. Now try the samething in notepad to see how text selection should work correctly.
Overall I am quite impressed! But hey remember the first rule of the game - "I'll simply state that I am badly looking for a *free* Notepad replacement." (notice free ;-)). Just kidding :-), I would have loved to convince my manager for getting me a copy too but for this issue :)
Hi [Anonymous], TextPad suffers from the same - no-complex-script-unicode-support flaw :(... How these companies claim themselves as "Notepad Replacement" without their homework continues to befuddle me :-)
I was thinking, can't VS.NET or Eclipse be used for this purpose (No, haven't tried it out, but shouldn't they support full Unicode?) Apart from the fact that they will be a very resource *heavy* text editor, they also suffer from feature bloat/feature lack (both at the same time ;)) for text processing requirements. In fact, wouldn't Word suffice ? ;)
What is the requirement btw, Is it for some customer?
Anyway, I started off with a simple google search for 'Unicode Text Editor' and came up with the following links:
1. http://www.unipad.org/main/
2. http://www.wolosoft.com/en/superedi/
3. http://www.esperanto.mv.ru/UniRed/ENG/
I find your situation amusing and difficult, how many editors are you going to install/uninstall on your machine? And, a few days down the line, which uninstall program are you going to blame, when you find a shared dll missing - gleefully removed by a 'helpful' uninstaller ;)
Anyway fed up with the list of editors being thrown up in the search, I opened another link which looked promising and reached this page which lists a lot of editors with a line or two of (sometimes useless) comments.
http://zsigri.tripod.com/fontboard/wplinks.html
Apparently, the list of editors on the right mentions the same editors which I have mentioned above.
Going through the comments I stumbled upon BabelPad, a long forgotten utility. Long ago, when browsing for some information on Unicode, I had stumbled upon Alan Wood's site and in turn upon BabelPad.
So, onto his page, and I found that even he has a list of Unicode Text Editors.
I think, your search for a Unicode Text Editor would end there :)
All the best:
http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/utilities_editors.html
Main Kaach Kha Saktha hoon, aur mujhe peeda nahin hoti. Now that's funny!
P.S. Couldn't stop at that search, so like always, started at basics and went to www.unicode.org to search for products that are unicode compliant (Assumption: If any editors are listed there, they better do everything in unicode that a regular user would be able to do with ASCII text in a ASCII text editor)
Start at http://www.unicode.org/onlinedat/products.html
and search for 'Other Systems and Products'
Among those eclectic products, there are some editors listed there, notably BabelPad, http://www.lugaru.com/ and the panacea for all editor ills - Vi, or rather Vim (www.vim.org) (The editor that Jim Allchin prefers ;) Hahaha, I remember him coding in Vi at the PDC ? ( http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/Jim/10-27pdc03.asp) )
Apologies for the long comment :) Was thinking, should've rather e-mailed you.
Oh Vinil you won't give up will you ;-)
Yes VS and Word are always there (for that matter there is even WordPad) but we still fire up notepad right :-)?
No the requirements are not for a customer but just for my personal use.
I tried BabelPad and indeed this is the first editor I've seen that works and works well with Indian Languages :). I am being really really picky now - but notepad automatically fetches the right font for me the moment I start typing in Hindi, while here I need to manually change font to Mangal for Hindi characters to show. Since it applies fonts globally to entire file, I cannot create mixed language files unless I am probably using Arial Unicode. Also, it is really so basic that I don't see enough value over notepad...
So I guess notepad it is for me for next few days till I get itchy for a perfect replacement once again.
p.s. Published Anonymously by mistake, deleting and reposting as Deepak :-)
my two cents:
Try MetaPad [http://www.liquidninja.com/metapad/]
It seems to support Indic [based on my limited understanding of Indic and globalisation], When i used the onscreen keyboard and typed k, followed by s, it did show के
But two things :-
a) the three options on the right click in NotePad [not supported]
b) I am not sure the textboxes support indic :(, it was not able to find के using the search textbox.
c) fonts are applied globally, like Notepad.
So, Notepad is not so small as it seems :-), a lot of work has been done behind the scenes. The search did work in Notepad.
[i added c) after i read your last comment, the earlier (deleted) comment missed that point]
Ah; bumping up ancient threads.
But the thing is - it's 2007, and I'm yet to find a notepad-replacement with the following features:
1. Preferable open-source (I'll settle for freeware)
2. Syntax highlighting
3. Reopen last open files when launched
4. Windows IME support (in order to use Tavultesoft Keyman to type Tamil)
5. Correct rendering of complex glyphs (again, I need correct Tamil rendering)
Here's the rundown:
jEdit: Complex glyphs incorrectly rendered
Notepad++: No IME support
RJ Text-ed: No IME support
EditPlus: Supports Unicode excellently - but not free
So, Deepak, EditPlus may well work for your needs; but if you find a tool that'll satisfy mine, do tell!
xellos with a follow-up here:
I found SciTE! Here's how it stacks up:
1. Open-source
2. Syntax highlighting
3. Reopens last open files
4. Windows IME support (can support Windows on-screen keyboard, as well as Tavultesoft Keyman)
5. The Tamil looks good :)
+ quite fast
+ quite light
+ portable version exists
+ multi-platform
Ah - I think it is the same one that comes with the default install of Ruby on Windows. Though it supports Unicode (both UCS2 and UTF8) but I couldn't get it to work with the Windows IME (I just got question marks on attempting to type ????).
I'll try the latest version (1.75) and report the findings here.
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