Top 9 Best Text Editors You Might Not Want to Miss
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KeenWrite
Java-based text editor that comes with numerous features, such as live preview, formulas, Markdown support and string interpolation.
KeenWrite is a Java-based text editor that packs numerous additional functions, such as support for formulas and for interpolated strings that are meant to reference externally defined values.
Feature-packed text editor
You can either start a new document from scratch or you can open an existing file on your PC: Markdown documents, TXT, RMD, RXML or XML.
Multiple files can be opened side by side, each in its own tab, so you can easily explore their contents within the same window. Also, you can benefit from the integrated real-time spell checker that helps your text remain free of typos.
You can also format your text using the functions provided in the toolbar from the main window or within the available menus and submenus. The options include italic, bold, underline, superscript, subscript, as well as strikethrough.
You can also insert a blockquote, inline code, fenced code block, hyperlink, or an image. Multiple types of headings and lists are supported.
Markdown editor
Unlike regular text editors, KeenWrite can help you open Markdown documents and analyze both the source and the preview versions. This way, you can make sure that the result matches your expectations before integrating it in your projects.
However, there is no list or documentation for the supported Markdown commands, so you should be already familiarized with this syntax before using it within KeenWrite.
Additionally, several types of diagrams are supported (like UML, GraphViz, Mermaid, sequence, and others), along with rendering of math formulas due to TeX notation.
To summarize
All in all, KeenWrite has the potential to meet the needs of all the users who want to integrate variables and formulas in their documents. Also, thanks to the numerous supported themes, you can make sure this application matches the theme of your OS with only a few mouse clicks.
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Kate
Text editor that features support for a wide variety of programming languages, syntax highlighting and scripts, which also provides you with an extensive configuration window.
If you are working as a software developer, you surely understand the importance of having reliable tools that can help you simplify your tasks.
One of the software solutions that can come in handy in the situation described above is Kate, as it features a broad spectrum of advanced functions.
Comprehensive layout
This program comes with a well-organized, complex user interface that features an outstanding amount of functions, which can be easily accessed via standard menus.
More so, the application provides you with an interactive tooltip component that lets you select any item from the main window and provides you with useful information about it.
Advanced text editor
Kate is a complex text editor that features an outstanding amount of advanced functions, which were designed to simplify your work. You can organize your projects by creating folders and sort them by their name, path or opening order.
This program features support for numerous programming language, thus providing you with multiple possibilities regarding your project types. Among the supported ones, it is possible to find C, C++, Haskell, Latex, LISP, Lua, Pascal, Python and Ruby. Also, syntax highlighting is supported.
Vast selection of functions
It is possible to create multiple sessions if you need several workplaces for your projects. Also, you can access a comprehensive list of scripts regarding navigation, quick coding and editing. Also, you can change the program's default mode according to your needs by choosing one of the numerous modules it packs, sorted by their category.
Among the featured categories, you can find assembler, configuration, database, hardware, markup, other, scientific, scripts or sources. You can also toggle a Read-Only mode for your source code, to prevent any accidental modifications that might occur.
Complex text editor with a plethora of additional functions
All things considered, Kate is a reliable text editor that packs a huge amount of additional features, including support for numerous languages, syntax highlighting and a script library. It comes with a smooth, comprehensive user interface, neatly-organized functions and a handy tooltip component that might help you understand its capabilities better.
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LanguageTool
This modern-looking text editor features style, grammar, and spelling correction functions to enrich your writing and help you improve.
Grammar can be complicated, and that's true for all languages. As you're learning a new language — or even writing in your mother tongue — it's not at all uncommon for your sentences to flounder because of some grammatical error, be it an unwitting one or not.
Considering that even natives can have some trouble when writing in their own language and that those learning a new tongue tend to make mistakes, trying out a grammar checker wouldn't be a bad idea. LanguageTool provides a Windows app that can help you improve your writing, giving you real-time corrections and style suggestions in its simple-to-use text editor.
The program will help you as you write
Grammar checkers have become quite popular in the last few years, and it's easy to see why. Considering that many of them offer browser extensions and web apps, this app's offer as a standalone program is most interesting.
In essence, you can use this as you use any text editor, treating the active suggestion feature as a bonus: feed your writing into it, and it'll check and notify you if any irregularities are found.
The main reason someone would use standalone software like this — in place of a browser extension or web app — is simply owed to convenience. You no longer have to rely on your browser to make use of the checker's capabilities: the standalone app features all of them, serving to boost your productivity.
About the correcting feature
The program had no trouble picking up on the more conventional grammar errors, suggesting modifications right away. Even when it came to more complex sentences, we found its advice to still be quite helpful, though you can't fully rely on it in such cases.
If there's a word you often use that is correct, but the app keeps flagging it, there's a Personal Dictionary feature to have the program omit recommending changes to words of your choosing.
As for languages other than English, the app could not correct text in the Japanese language, even though it claims to support it. We tried inputting some passages in German and Arabic, and the app was quick to offer suggestions for those languages.
In conclusion
LanguageTool can be reliably used by just about anyone to improve their writing style and consistency: it's a nice text editor, and the fact that it can suggest grammar changes the way it does is a neat bonus to have.
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Atlantis Word Processor Lite
A simple, old-school text editor equipped with an abundance of paragraph and text manipulation functions, different hotkeys and more.
Amongst the first activities you could perform on a computer was writing. Basic text editors made it possible to organize simple documents and print them out on connected devices. Now, it’s all complicated and modern text editors like Atlantis Word Processor Lite want to integrate as many features as possible, making overall work rather time consuming and confusing at times.
Simple interface makes accommodation easy
Probably the first thing that strikes you when launching the application is the rather outdated interface that seems pulled out of the last decade. There aren’t any other themes to choose from, nor options to modify colors for that matter, but only move, remove, and add toolbar elements.
This simplicity in design doesn’t take you long to understand, so let’s say it gives a plus to accommodation. Most of the toolbar buttons are those you find in almost any self-respecting text editor. There are a few others that aim to give more flexibility to your work.
Multiple style editing options
If you’re using the application simply to write down text and use it somewhere else, than all goes well and you can start adding characters, symbols, use copy-paste functions, format text, align paragraphs, and everything else you already know how to do.
The application comes with a few features of its own, but they don’t bring anything special to the whole operation. These are only some variations of alignment options, copy functions or paragraph manipulation, which you won’t use that often.
What’s more, file support leaves a lot to be desired. In the setup process, you’re asked whether or not to associate it with RTF files, with other supported ones only counting as DOC, and plain TXT, both for import and export.
In conclusion
On an ending note, Atlantis Word Processor Lite comes with good intentions and suffices basic to average text editing needs. However, it’s specialty is not to be overlooked, but the lack of greater file support and more flexibility almost renders them useless. Overall, it makes for an old-school text editor you can take wherever you go due to portability.
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Vim
The improved version of a Unix app called Vi, this program is suited for coding and programming, featuring a simple and effective code and string-compatible structure.
Don't be fooled by Vim's notepad-like appearance. It's not a simple or basic program at all. Quite the opposite. This small application is basically an improved version of the Vi app included with all Unix systems.
The trick here is that it includes Vi commands, plus a suite of new and more advanced ones. It's an application that was created with developers and programmers in mind. By all means, it is not a word processor. It's a tool for individuals working with text as codes or strings.
A very familiar interface
If you've dealt with Vi or with Notepad, for that matter, this program will seem very familiar. Don't be fooled by that feeling, because the bottom line is it's neither. Tools included with this program relate to text wrapping, line counting, indenting styles, and so on. Each of these particular actions has a command attached to it.
This ultimately means that you can control this app just by using your keyboard. It, of course, implies you know these codes by heart. Regardless, the command aspect is a useful feature for developers and programmers because it speeds things up. A command looks like "set: nu!" where the first half is the general command and the second half is the more specific action.
Designed for strings and codes
No matter how you look at this app, you can't just use it for simple text writing. It's not that good of a word editor mainly because it wasn't supposed to be that. The way you have lines arranged, the absence of features that deal with page adjustment and text improvement come to support this idea once again.
On the other hand, the highlighting features, the commands, and this semi-automation side to the program, all leading one to the idea that Vim was indeed created to serve individuals with advanced computer knowledge. There's no doubt that Vim has successfully managed to step in the shoes of its Unix predecessor, Vi.
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Download Hubs
Vim is part of these download collections: Text Editors
Atlantis Word Processor
Compact, fast-loading, but still powerful and efficient word processor that comes with a rich feature set for editing documents or creating them from scratch.
Notepad and WordPad might be the word processors that are packed by default in all Windows flavors, yet they have long stopped sufficient for day-to-day needs of expert users. There are many third-party alternatives you can try, and Atlantis Word Processor is one of them.
Highly customizable GUI
The first time you run this application, you get asked if you want to spend some time to modify its GUI to your liking. You can choose between classic toolbars or tool bands, adjust the icons' size and their spacing, hide or show several additional toolbars.
You can preview these changes in real-time, thus helping you come up with a GUI perfectly tailored to your own tastes for creating text documents or editing existing ones (TXT, RTF, DOC, DOCX, ODT, COD, WRI).
Supports basic text operations
Just like other similar tools, once you select a block of text, you can change its formatting to italic, bold, underline or strikethrough, modify the lettercase, while also tampering with the colors of the font and of the highlight.
You can also choose a different font type or heading, depending on your necessities.
Allows you to create e-books
When you are satisfied with your document, you can either save it as TXT, RTF, DOC, DOCX or COD, or you can export it to EPUB and create an e-book. You can also save it as a web page or a ZIP archive, then send it via email without leaving Atlantis Word Processor.
A nifty function is converting multiple documents from one format to another in a single operation.
To sum it up
In a nutshell, Atlantis Word Processor is a feature-packed utility that can meet the needs of both professional and beginner writers. Due to its highly customizable GUI, everyone can create an environment they feel comfortable in so they can focus on their projects.
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Download Hubs
Atlantis Word Processor is part of these download collections: RTF Viewer, Edit ODT, Convert ODT, Open TXT
Text Editor Pro
Process not only text or HTML files, but also Python, Perl, Ruby or Fortran with this text and code editor, which features syntax highlighting and other similar features.
Text Editor Pro is a comprehensive and easy to use text editing tool that offers syntax highlighting for over 50 scripts.
Right off the bat you notice how good the graphic design of the application looks. If focuses on simplicity and ease of access. All the tools you use frequently are displayed in the toolbar at the top of the main window but can also be accessed from the right-click context menu.
What is guaranteed to surprise you and catch your attention is that the application supports over 50 programming languages such as C++, COBOL, DOT Graph Drawing, DSP, DWScript, Fortran, Foxpro, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby SQL and many more. This feature alone makes Text Editor Pro an invaluable tool that can appeal to almost any programmer.
You can easily select any of the languages from a drop-down menu, create a new document and start writing. The application can handle multiple opened documents and displays them in separate tabs. Since aspect is important in the layout of the text, you get to increase and decrease indent and sort the text lines.
Working with hundreds of lines of text you're bound to need to locate certain words and commands. To help you out in this matter, the application provides you with a practical and powerful search function. It allows you to toggle case sensitive, whole words only and regular expression search modes. Another means of locating content is to mark it and then return to it when you need to. For this, you get the option of adding multiple bookmarks throughout the document.
When you work on a project and save multiple drafts of it you can can very easily get confused trying to figure out what is different between them. To make it easier for you, the application allows two files to be opened and compared line by line.
With the above to consider and more to discover, Text Editor Pro is by all means a handy and reliable text editing tool that provides you with the means to edit code in a large variety of programming languages.
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EmEditor Professional
Feature-rich text editor for seasoned users, with support for large files, Unicode, file comparison, advanced search, syntax highlights, code snippets and more.
Created as an intricate word processing application for truly experienced PC users, EmEditor Professional seems to have everything it needs to compete with other tools in its category.
It feels light, it's very fast, and it has minimal impact on computer performance. However, the true attraction lies in its comprehensive set of features and customization preferences dedicated to text editing.
Customizable setup and interface
Setting up EmEditor takes little time, and you are given the possibility to customize components from the get-go. For example, you can exclude languages and plugins.
The program's wrapped in a clean and intuitive interface, which consists of a large window that has all options neatly arranged in different menus, for text editing, search and replace functions, the viewing mode, document comparison, macro recording, tools, and window options.
Encoding support and fullscreen mode
EmEditor allows you to open very large files which are usually unsupported by common word processors. Moreover, it features full Unicode support and lets you switch to full screen mode. All clips are automatically recorded to history, so you can later examine and reuse them.
It's possible to search and replace keywords within the same document or across multiple files in a specified directory, and the application lets you apply a wide range of advanced filters in this regard. Furthermore, you can compare two documents by placing them next to each other, as well as enable synchronized scrolling. A spellchecker can be enabled and personalized.
Syntax highlights and code snippets
EmEditor also reserves some special options for programmers and web designers. Apart from the fact that it enables them to open coding scripts, it features syntax highlighting and predefined snippets for popular languages, such as C#, C++, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Perl or PHP.
You can record macros with mouse movements and key presses and play them for repetitive tasks that don't require your intervention, load plugins, create shortcuts to launch external programs without leaving EmEditor's interface, as well as activate word completion mode. These are just part of the features provided by this utility.
How to switch to FREE mode
EmEditor used to have a freeware edition that is now integrated into the professional version. If you're not ready to purchase the full version yet, you can easily make the switch to continue using EmEditor in free mode for unlimited use. To do so, go to "Tools" menu -> "All Commands" -> "Help" -> "Downgrade".
However, you should keep in mind that some professional features will no longer be available, like support for plugins, macros and very large files. On the bright side, you will not be asked by the application to upgrade (you have to reinstall the professional edition) and you will not receive marketing messages.
Evaluation and conclusion
CPU and RAM consumption was minimal in our tests, and the program didn't hang, crash or prompt error messages. Although it may prove troublesome at first due to its elaborate set of options and configuration settings, EmEditor Professional definitely deserves your attention.
NOTE: For more information, make sure to check out our in-depth review for EmEditor Professional 15.
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TED Notepad
Text editor that can replace Windows Notepad because of richer text and line formatting options, clipboard control, and keyboard shortcuts.
TED Notepad is a word processor that comes bundled with a few extra options, compared to Notepad.
The interface of the program is familiar to the one of Notepad. You can import text documents and select the encoding method.
But you can also use the "undo" and "redo" functions (for as many steps as you want), swap text, as well as insert recently deleted text, the file name, full path, time and date, and others.
In addition, you can select a word, line, paragraph or all, delete a line, cut off a word or line, backspace a word or line, use smart or copying return, and complete a word or line.
Furthermore, you can use search functions (e.g. "Find", "Find Next", "Find Previous", "Find Selected", "Find Later"), change the case (e.g. all uppercase or lowercase, case inversion, word capitals, up to sentences) and perform actions on lines (e.g. indent, quote, shift left, trim trail spaces or empty lines, find duplicates).
Moreover, you can extract words, translate characters, view statistics (e.g. total characters without spaces, average line length), reverse order of lines or words, sort text (ascending, descending, random), wrap, as well as create and apply text filters.
Plus, you can create a favorites list, copy text to keys, enable line numbers, visible newlines, line lengths, word wrap and margins, zoom in and out, switch to full screen mode, and more.
The tool uses a low-to-moderate amount of system resources and can guide you to a complete online user manual. No errors have occurred during our tests and TED Notepad did not freeze or crash.
All in all, TED Notepad is an excellent alternative to Windows Notepad, since it comes packed with a lot of extra useful features that simplify the work of the users. We highly recommend it.
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Download Hubs
TED Notepad is part of these download collections: Open TXT, Convert TXT, Create TXT
