Shopping for a new go-to text editor/word processor

Lon Winters

Hello to all, first time here. I’ve used NP++ before and really like it, but I’m looking for a good all around program. Word is too much, Notepad is not enough and Wordpad is, well, completely useless. I started my search at a site that listed the “five best…” editors. At the moment, I’m just reading and downloading, no testing yet. Few questions if you will (or skip the reading and maybe tell me what you like or not with this program and other programs):

The first app listed is shareware for $70. Can anyone tell my why any program is better than, say, a free one - especially a free good one?
I would like some word processing capability - text and HTML, basic formatting, lists and bullets, spell check and the like. How is NPPP in this area?
Do we say “NP++” or “NPPP”? : )
This one I don’t think exists anywhere, but it’s worth a shot: when typing and get to the end of visible line and in the middle of a word, it wraps and I have to re-adjust my vision down to the next line. If I make a mistake and backspace, it jumps back up. How about instead of the wrap-jump, we have a scroll? I know this isn’t really a big deal, but I do have vision problems and sometimes simple things are hard.
Use-case summary: draft documents, notes to self, tasks lists temp until moved to go-to list and management program, open and edit all text docs inc. ini, db, txt, doc(x).
For the coders - what do you like better than Dreamweaver code view? (any chance of becoming a full-blown HTML/web page editor? Code hints and coloring, tag closing, style sheet helpers, testing server preview, etc. Yeah, Since Adobe deprecated the one thing that made DW better (server behaviors), I think the field is open - they really took the inherent simplicity of HTML, JS and CSS and made it not simple by automating what isn’t
needed and vice-versa.

That’s it. And to you coders who don’t need the help and automation, who can take a text editor and script the page, save perhaps for referencing a jQuery library or two - my hat is off to you.

David Bailey

I much prefer tools that don’t get ‘enhanced’ in all sorts of arbitrary directions, so you can browse the internet, read email, compose music, write code, edit binary, and interface to Facebook all within one package (I exaggerate very slightly!).

Editing formatted text is vastly different from editing source code or other raw text, and I think it is far better to use different tools for those two processes. Cut/paste and the file-store provide excellent way to communicate between your tools!

With free software, you don’t need a tool that does everything, you can afford several tools!

David

Ricardo

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