Notepad++

Notepad++
	Screenshot of Notepad++
Developer(s)	Don Ho
Initial release	November 24, 2003
Repository	github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus ;
Written in	C++
Operating system	Microsoft Windows
Available in	Multilingual (49)
Type	Source code editor
License	GNU General Public License
Website	http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/

Notepad++ is a text editor and source code editor for Windows, though it can run on Linux and Mac OS X, using software such as Wine^[1]. One main advantage of Notepad++ over the built-in Windows text editor, Notepad, is tabbed editing, to easily work with multiple open files.

It is distributed as free software. The project is hosted on SourceForge.net, from where it has been downloaded over twenty million times^[2]^[3] and twice won the Community Choice Award for Best Developer Tool^[4]. To display and edit text and programming language source code files, Notepad++ uses the Scintilla editor component.

Features

Some of its general features include^[5]:

Tabbed document interface^[6]
Drag-and-drop
Multiple clipboard
Split screen editing and synchronized scrolling
Spell checker (requires Aspell) (Spell checker doesn't distinguish between text and code)
Supports file formats such as Unicode, for international writing systems
Find and replace over multiple documents
File comparison
Zooming

Programming languages

It also includes features for source code editing^[5]:

Auto-completion
Bookmarks
Syntax highlighting and syntax folding
Brace and indent highlighting
Regular expression find and replace
Speech synthesis
FTP Browser (plug-in included in standard installation)
Macro recording and execution.
Various tools such as line sorting, text encoding conversion, text folding
File status auto-detection
Plugins for multiline regular expression search and replace

Notepad++ supports syntax highlighting and syntax folding for 48 programming, scripting, and markup languages^[5]^[7]. It attempts to automatically detect the language that a given file uses, using a modifiable list of file extension bindings. Users may also manually set the current language, overriding the extension's default language. The program also supports autocompletion for a subset of the API of some programming languages.

Users can also define their own language (for syntax highlighting) and its respective API (for autocompletion) by using the built-in User Language Define System^[5]. Users may configure the syntax highlighting's font styles per element, per language, and the resulting formatted script may be printed in full-color (WYSIWYG). Additionally, Notepad++ displays indent guidelines when source code is indented with tab characters, and highlights closing braces, brackets and tags.

Plugins

Notepad++ has support for macros and plugins^[8]. Currently, there are 27 official plugins for Notepad++, 10 of which are included by default in the program^[9]. The first plugin to be included in the program was "TextFX", which includes features such as W3C validation for HTML and CSS, text sorting, character case alteration and quote handling^[10].

Development

This project, based on the Scintilla editor component, is written in C++ with only Win32 API calls using only the STL in order to increase performance and reduce program size. The aim of Notepad++ is to reduce overall power consumption by using efficient binaries that require less CPU power^[5].

References

^ W. Jason Gilmore (2008). Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional. Novice to Pro Series (3rd ed.). Apress. p. 49. ISBN 1590598628. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |isbn13= ignored (help)
^ "SourceForge.net: Project Statistics for Notepad++". SourceForge.net. Retrieved 2009-07-15.
^ "Top Downloads - For all time, updated daily". SourceForge. Retrieved 2009-12-17.
^ "SourceForge's 4th Annual Community Choice Awards". SourceForge. Retrieved 2009-10-01.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Notepad++ Homepage - "Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding" Cite error: The named reference "Homepage" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
^ Fox, Geoff (July 7, 2008). "Notepad++ Does It Again Again". AppScout. Ziff Davis Media. Retrieved 2009-10-01.
^ DeCarlo, Matthew (May 26, 2009). "Download of the Week: Notepad++". TechSpot. Retrieved 2009-10-01.
^ Smith, Tim (September 21, 2009). "Notepad++ 5.5". Computeractive. Retrieved 2009-10-01.
^ Notepad++ Download Page
^ TextFX Official Homepage

External links

[Gilmore-1] W. Jason Gilmore (2008). Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice to Professional. Novice to Pro Series (3rd ed.). Apress. p. 49. ISBN 1590598628. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |isbn13= ignored (help)

[2] "SourceForge.net: Project Statistics for Notepad++". SourceForge.net. Retrieved 2009-07-15.

[3] "Top Downloads - For all time, updated daily". SourceForge. Retrieved 2009-12-17.

[4] "SourceForge's 4th Annual Community Choice Awards". SourceForge. Retrieved 2009-10-01.

[Homepage-5] Notepad++ Homepage - "Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding" Cite error: The named reference "Homepage" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).

[6] Fox, Geoff (July 7, 2008). "Notepad++ Does It Again Again". AppScout. Ziff Davis Media. Retrieved 2009-10-01.

[7] DeCarlo, Matthew (May 26, 2009). "Download of the Week: Notepad++". TechSpot. Retrieved 2009-10-01.

[8] Smith, Tim (September 21, 2009). "Notepad++ 5.5". Computeractive. Retrieved 2009-10-01.

[download-9] Notepad++ Download Page

[textfx-10] TextFX Official Homepage

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