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    Why Notepad++ is not available for Macbook?

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    • Adnan ArshadA
      Adnan Arshad
      last edited by

      After so much technological advancement, all computer scientists what couldn’t do so far… is Notepad++ for Mac? But Why?

      PeterJonesP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • PeterJonesP
        PeterJones @Adnan Arshad
        last edited by

        @Adnan-Arshad ,

        For the same reason that Etruscan isn’t the official language of Oregon: only a relatively small number of Oregonians have been trained to understand it.

        With the right translator, it might be possible to make a Mac understand the compiled code in Notepad++, but by default, Macs don’t speak the same language as Windows machines do.

        Adnan ArshadA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • Adnan ArshadA
          Adnan Arshad @PeterJones
          last edited by

          @PeterJones Thanks

          I am not a software engineer but still I guess any language can be used to build code editor that’s looks similar in design, options, and the way Notepad++ provides user defined language screen where it is so easy to highlight syntax for any language. There are lot of code editors for mac. The same developer using same language can build a code editor that has same design as Notepad++

          PeterJonesP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • PeterJonesP
            PeterJones @Adnan Arshad
            last edited by PeterJones

            @Adnan-Arshad ,

            Not without a complete re-write of the codebase, at which point it ceases to be Notepad++. Notepad++ is intimately tied to the Win32 API, which is the set of instructions, libraries, and programming philosophy behind Microsoft Windows 10 and its predecessors.

            Linux/*nix, and thus Mac, do not natively speak Win32; there are some tools for Linux (like Wine) which allow running Win32-API-based on Linux (*), by (I believe) passing the Win32 calls through a translator to convert them to instructions that one of the GUI toolkits available on Linux can understand.

            (*: Wine might work on Mac, since it has a *nix OS underlying its highly-customized Mac-specific environment, though I cannot remember any Mac people ever mentioning using Wine, whereas I’ve heard plenty of Linux people mention using Wine. If Wine is an option for you, then that’s a way you should be able to run Notepad++.)

            For any GUI application to work natively on Windows and Linux and Mac, it has to be written from the ground up to be compatible with a GUI toolkit that is available to all, rather than using the proprietary Win32 API. That was not the choice that Notepad++ made 16 years ago

            Adnan ArshadA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
            • Alan KilbornA
              Alan Kilborn
              last edited by

              I think I can paraphase that really long-winded thing from @Adnan-Arshad :

              I am not a software engineer but still I’m sure other people would like to hear my opinions on things I know absolutely nothing about.

              So the above is somewhat in jest, but PUH-LEASE, come on…

              If you want to do something constructive, dive in, learn programming in a reasonable (not hackish) way, and CONTRIBUTE something other than just, well, what you did.

              Adnan ArshadA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Adnan ArshadA
                Adnan Arshad @PeterJones
                last edited by

                @PeterJones Thanks a lot explaining. Looks like I can just pray then. Btw Wine was working with the previous version of MacOS. Since it updated to Catalina, it Wine is not supported anymore.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Adnan ArshadA
                  Adnan Arshad @Alan Kilborn
                  last edited by

                  @Alan-Kilborn Thanks for the advise. But purpose of my post was not to make others listen my opinion. If you look again at my post it has question marks. I was just wondering why something like Notepad++ is not available for Mac. It is so easy to highlight syntax in Notepad++ but I couldn’t find any single code editor for macbook where I can do same without writing another code for just for this. So, I just wanted to know why it couldn’t happen so far despite lot of people ask for this.

                  PeterJonesP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • PeterJonesP
                    PeterJones @Adnan Arshad
                    last edited by

                    @Adnan-Arshad said,

                    Wine was working with the previous version of MacOS. Since it updated to Catalina, it Wine is not supported anymore.

                    According to this stackexchange question/answers, you can get Wine to compile 64bit for Catalina. Since Notepad++ comes in a 64bit version, you should be golden. Hopefully that works for you.

                    If it doesn’t, you said,

                    I couldn’t find any single code editor for macbook where I can do same

                    https://www.google.com/search?q=mac+os+text+editor+syntax+highlighting doesn’t find any that actually do syntax highlighting? The first page of results looks promising to me, but I am not a MacOS user, so I don’t know.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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