Veteran Editors Notepad++ and Geany Hit Milestone Versions

Liam Proven reports via The Register: One of the best FOSS text editors for Windows, Notepad++, is turning 20, while cross platform Geany just hit version 2.0 as it turns 18 years old. Notepad++'s version 8.6 is the twentieth anniversary release of one of the go-to FOSS text editors for Windows. [...] If you use an Arm-powered Windows machine, such as the ThinkPad X13S, there is now a native Arm64 version. It still supports x86-32 as well, and there are portable versions which work without being installed locally -- handy if you don't have admin rights. There is even a usefully recent version for Windows XP if you are still using that geriatric OS. This release adds multi-select, allowing you to manipulate multiple instances of the same text at once, which looks confusing but very powerful.

It is a staple on all of the Reg FOSS desk's Windows partitions, thanks to its inclusion in the essential Windows post-install setup tool Ninite. Ninite will install -- and update -- a whole swath of FOSS and freeware tools for Windows, making setup of a new machine doable in just a couple of clicks. And if you keep the Ninite installer file around, you can re-run it later and it will update everything it installed first time around. Ninite does offer other programmers' editors, such as Eclipse and Microsoft Visual Studio Code -- but they are behemoths by comparison. VSCode is implemented as an Electron app, meaning that it's huge, embeds an entire copy of Chromium, and scoffs RAM like it's going out of fashion. Notepad++ is a native Win32 app, making it tiny and fast: the download is less than 5MB, one twentieth the size of VSCode.

Sluggish, bloated editors are not just a problem on Windows. Gargantuan Electron apps are distressingly prevalent on Linux and macOS as well. This vulture is guilty of using some, and even recommending them -- because some of them can do things that nothing else can. That's not true in the case of plain text editors, though. You don't have to put up with apps that take a good fraction of a gigabyte for this. Geany is a good example. It straddles the line between a text editor and an IDE: it can manage multi-project files, automatically call out to compilers and suchlike, and parse their output to highlight errors. We last mentioned it nearly a decade ago but the project recently reached voting age -- at least for humans -- and after this milestone in maturity its developers called the latest release version 2.0. It has better support for dark mode, a new tree view in its sidebar, adds a bunch of new supported file types, and can detect if the user changes the type of a file and re-do its syntax highlighting to match.

this person ...

[znrt]

VSCode is implemented as an Electron app, meaning that it's huge, embeds an entire copy of Chromium, and scoffs RAM like it's going out of fashion.

... never used eclipse.

efficiency and resource economy in coding and design is something to very much appreciate, but in this case i wouldn't consider "an entire copy of chromium" to be bloat simply because of the sheer amount of functionality it provides in exchange. it's just a practical decision, it's an ok tool for the job and electron performance is more than adequate imo. i don't really get this recent electron hate, don't like it don't use it but describing vs-code as bloat is gross exaggeration and

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Eclipse is much slower than VS Code, and requires an entire Java VM to run on.

Also, Eclipse is horrible. The design is just awful. The way it handles different modes for writing code and debugging, and the way it handles workspaces, is just terrible. What makes VS Code good is that it does away with all that crap and just handles browsing a directory of code automatically. No need for workspaces and projects.

Re:

[angel'o'sphere]

With 3 mouse clicks the view of coding and debugging: IS THE SAME.

Everyone codes in DEBUG MODE anyway ...

Eclipse is much slower than VS Code, and requires an entire Java VM to run on.
Exactly, and as stupid as it is, the Java VM needs an entire OS to run on.

Perhaps you should check your web browser at your earliest convenience: JavaScript VM running in a browser, browser running on an OS. Bonus points if half of the browser is either written in Java or JavaScript ...

Facepalm ...

Re:

[unrtst]

i wouldn't consider "an entire copy of chromium" to be bloat

... but describing vs-code as bloat is gross exaggeration

That's, like, the entire definition of bloat! Pulling in a codebase that is larger than the codebase of comparable native apps just to use as a framework? If that's not bloat, then we need a new word (HINT: it is bloat).

Re:

[angel'o'sphere]

The "codebase" is not "pulled".
Only the stuff referenced is loaded into memory.

If you want to code a slim version instead of using a framework: UP TO YOU.

Veteran? Emacs and Vim are true veterans!

[Tony Isaac]

Notepad++ is just barely more than a teenager.

And vi, the predecessor of vim, goes back to 1976.

Now get off my lawn!

(I do love Notepad++ though, it's pretty much essential to have on any Windows machine.)

Re:

[drainbramage]

You call those veterans?
Seems you don' know ed.

Re:

[Tony Isaac]

Yeah I know, ed and his cousin edlin, but it's almost a stretch to call them editors.

Re:

[drainbramage]

Sure ed wasn't going to win any beauty contest but ed was always there to do the job.
Indispensable when recovering a UNIX server after one or more of it's SCSI drives had failed.
While ed worked in single user mode the other editors required multi user mode and so were not available.

Re:

[angel'o'sphere]

An editor does not require multi user mode.
I guess you mean "run levels".

If some editors where on partitions or disks that are not available on a certain run level, someone made a mistake in setting up the system.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Ok boomer.

See everyone can be dismissive for no reason.

better on Linux

[nicubunu]

When I have to work from Windows, I do use Notepad++ because is packed with features, but I don't like its look and feel, I do prefer to work instead from Linux with Pluma (that's the default text editor in the MATE desktop, forked from gedit)

Re:

[JThundley]

Allow me to recommend Kate, it's also a pretty simple code editor but this one's part of KDE and it's been ported to Windows. I switched to it from PyCharm back when I ran Windows and it was pretty great :)

I still use Wine just to have NP++

[Rujiel]

Using ubuntu, I haven't been able to find anything GUI based in linux world that offers as much customizability w/ hotkeys as it does.

Re:

[TTL0]

Sublime Text ?

Re:

[Rujiel]

Sublime is honestly overkill for my purposes, I don't need anything close to an IDE (I have intellij for that). Wine and NP++ together have a smaller memory footprint for me than sublime text does. The way that program does config has a learning curve too (no GUI, just editing a textfile). Of course NP++ config is also bloated-looking and has a learning curve, but it's the devil I know.

Re:

[Rujiel]

After trying sublime text, these are my main complaints.. 1.bcan't hiden the title bar in Ubintu withiut a gnome plugin.. 2. Can't have a move tab hotkey without a sublime plugin... 3. Shift + right click to select columns is awkward as hell, and there's no way to configure it. I want it just to be alt+left click drag.

Used Notepad++ many years. Then vi.

[PoiBoy]

For many years I was a Notepad++ user on Windows; it's a good editor. Then I started using Windows and Linux side-by-side and wanted one editor across platforms. Getting Notepad++ to run under Wine or somesuch was too difficult for me. Eventually, every good computer user wakes up, bites the bullet, and switches to Vim/vi. Runs everywhere, is actually easy to use after you do the tutorial, and has many advanced options for customization and other features as you get more comfortable using it.

milestone

[groobly]

For all you non-USians, that's a 1.60934-kilometerstone. Not sure why slashdot keeps using Imperial units.