Free Plain Text Editors

Why use a text editor?
A text editor is just like a word processor without a lot of extra features. All operating systems come with a basic text editor. The main use of a text editor is for writing something in plain text with no formatting so that another program can read it and based on the information it gets from that file, the program will run one way or another.

Using a plain text editor or an off-line blog editor, rather than posting directly into the editor on any blogging platform provides advantages. Here are just two of them that will be of interest to wordpress.com bloggers:

(1) You can avoid all the woes that come with losing your post after you press “publish” oe “save” and find that the post did not make it into the database as you will have a back-up copy.

(2) You can avoid all the woes that come with copying and pasting text laden with “unique” formatting code like those found in Microsoft Word. Special note for wordpress.com bloggers – see icon 16 f – paste from Word.

EditPad Lite
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Features
EditPad Lite is a general-purpose text editor, designed to be small and compact, yet offer all the functionality you expect from a basic text editor. EditPad Lite works with Windows NT4, 98, 2000, ME, XP and is free for non-commercial use. That is, you may use EditPad Lite if you do not get paid, directly or indirectly, for the work you do with EditPad Lite. Registered charities may also use EditPad Lite.

You can open as many files in EditPad at a time as you want. You change between the open files by clicking on their. No hassle with heaps of overlapping windows. You will enjoy EditPad’s unlimited undo and redo. You can even undo changes after saving them, as long as you did not close the file. reads and writes UNIX (LF only) and Mac (CR only) text files (in addition to DOS/Windows CR+LF files, of course). text files and text files encoded in a variety of legacy code pages.

EditPad supports, plus a wide selection of and EBCDIC code pages. This means EditPad can, whether it was saved on a Windows or Linux computer, an old DOS PC or an IBM mainframe. If you run EditPad again when there is already an instance running, the file(s) you wish to edit will be opened by the existing EditPad window. This means there will be at most one EditPad window open, which will save you from a lot of task switching.

Of course, if you do need more instances, simply pick View|New editor from the menu. Block functions: save parts of your text to disk and insert a file in the current text. You can specify many: font, margins, headers/footers, etc. and immediately see the effects in the print preview.

You have the option to keep the EditPad of all other windows. When you close an unsaved file, EditPad will either warn you, automatically save the file as you prefer. Reopen menu that lists the last 16 files opened.

EditPad puts an in the system tray that remains visible, even if EditPad is closed. This way you have easy and fast access to EditPad, without the need to keep it running all the time. If you do not like this, you can, of course, disable this feature and make EditPad behave like a normal Windows application.

EditPad fully supports double byte character systems (DBCS) so you can edit texts written in Far East languages, such as Chinese, Japanese or Korean, as easily as those written in European languages. Many settings such as word wrap, line numbering and auto indent can be made for each file type individually. You could activate word wrap but not auto indent when editing a plain text file, and just the other way around when editing source code. You can also define your own file types which will be used to build the filters for open and save dialog boxes.

Configure EditPad’s appearance to your own taste and eyesight. Select the colors, font face and font size that you like. Make text cursor highly visible by selecting its size, color and blinking style. Make the mouse pointer easy to spot by choosing its shape and colors.
Uppercase, lowercase, invert case and initial caps conversion.
Easy and working installation and uninstallation.
Free for non-commercial use.

Notepad++
Screenshots
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Note Tab Lite – a free Notepad replacement, feature-rich text editor, and HTML editor
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NoteTab Light is the ultimate free Notepad replacement and a capable HTML editor. A slimmer version of the award-winning NoteTab Pro, this slick application makes text editing a breeze. Move quickly around a stack of large files with a simple tabbed interface. Format your text to your heart’s content. Write with the font of your choice, fixed-width or proportional.

Key Features

• Open and edit many documents at once
• Capable of editing huge text files
• Text drag-and-drop editing
• AutoCorrect/Auto-replace mode
• Capture text sent to Clipboard

If you need to cut and paste chunks from a pile of files, forget the Clipboard: you can set up a Paste Board file to save text clips automatically. Strip HTML tags from your files. Call up complete document statistics instantly. Use powerful, system-wide search and replace tools.

Speed up your work with text macros you can use them as shortcuts, or even to auto-replace those persistent typos. Handy sample macro libraries are supplied, and you can easily build your own. Make the most of NoteTab’s many options to suit your own orkstyle.

PS Pad
Screenshttp://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/screenshots.phphots
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PSPad is a freeware programmer’s editor for Microsoft Windows operating systems, useful for people who:

• work with various programming environments
• like highlighted syntax in their source code
• need a small tool with simple controls and the capabilities of a mighty code editor
• are looking for a tool that handles plain text
• want to spare time – PSPad offers rich text formating functions
• need tool what offer user extension capabilities
• want to save money and still have the functionality of professional products because PSPad is free for commercial and government purposes too

TED Notepad
Screenshot
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TED Notepad is a growing freeware editor for true plain-text. It looks like a small Notepad, but is more and more fertile in innovative features, text-processing functions and other tools. All of them on hotkeys; all designed for quicker and advanced editing. The light-weight portable application fits on USB drive and loads instantly with no installation required. TED Notepad is designed especially for daily writing of notes, lists, scripts and html files. Get ready for a simple text editor, yet full of new features and text tools – you will never learn them all. Don’t type, ted it!